Looking back at the past two decades since the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, foreign policy experts warn that Washington has learned few lessons since then, and the lack of accountability for the war's proponents has created an environment where a similar American-led war could occur.
"My basic answer to the question of 'could it happen again?' is for sure, absolutely it could happen again," Ahsan Butt, an associate professor at George Mason University, said during a panel hosted on Thursday by the Cato Institute in Washington.
"The real lessons of the Iraq war really haven't been learned."
'The real lessons of the Iraq War really haven't been learned'
- Ahsan Butt, George Mason University
In the leadup to the US invasion of Iraq, top officials in the American government, including former President George Bush, said that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
They cited US intelligence, including on the basis of information from a now-discredited Iraqi opposition group, which turned out to be false. Nevertheless, Washington launched an invasion with little opposition from Congress, leading to a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, and later in Syria.
And leading up to the invasion, there was near unanimous support for the war in Washington, with few news outlets - wit...