Talk:2003 invasion of Iraq

Problematic photo description

Despite what @Swatjester may say about the nature of this cheering as purposeful during the Firdos Square statue destruction, Iraqi civilians were in fact cheering the toppling of the statue and Iraqi civilians cheer as American soldiers topple Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad's Firdos Square, the article has a section going over this,

Before the statue was toppled, Marine Corporal Edward Chin of 1st Tank Battalion, 1st Marine Division (attached to 3rd Battalion 4th Marines) climbed the ladder and placed a U.S. flag over the statue's face. According to the book "Shooter", by Coughlin, Kuhlman, and Davis, other Marines of the 3/4 realized the PR disaster unfolding as the formerly cheering crowd became silent, with one woman shouting at the Marines to remove the flag.

where it's clearly described that snapping a photo at this time would only appear the Iraqis are purposefully, and thus not WP:POV, not incidentally cheering the toppling of the statue then. Maybe what was not known was it's hard to find a public domain photo with closeups of the crowd cheering the statue toppling, this would be a concise description which fulfills WP:TOOMUCH, but I had no problem with that description if such a photo was found, notwithstanding that the Iraq war page photo is what we're left with. However the correct way to deal with that is not for @Swatjester and @Adr28382 to disregard 45.73.35.210 (me)'s complaint

maintaining constructiveness (nothing was taken from civilian cheers)

and it reiterated as

Photo is much less meaningful in context WP:POV. Accurately describing this context in the page's infobox would be WP:TOOMUCH.

as not constructive. Hopefully the two admins and @User:Adr28382 will finally see the rationality and evidence now. Lumbering in thought (talk) 02:54, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

What you did was engaged in an edit war against four other editors without attempting to gain consensus while WP:LOUTSOCKing. Do not do that again. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 03:07, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Because I intend to keep my account and a prong here is good faith, that apparently has been questioned, I would point out that it was during a weekday, during business hours, on the IP account Talk page that many would tend to check I planned to come back on the main computer and I do not have a universal password that would enable me to log in to Wikipedia without having to manually look up the password or painlessly, and one of the reverts was to one with the edit summary What?. Lumbering in thought (talk) 03:34, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

I think we can AGF about using the IP but it is WP:BRD, not WP:BRRRRRRD - particularly when the objections are couched in P&G. This discussion should have been initiated earlier. Cinderella157 (talk) 04:20, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

I get the gist of what you're saying with all this jargon (two acronyms which aren't linked and one of which seems to only exist on The Free Dictionary), but to be clear, I'm not conceding the fact that reverting What?, with zero extra effort on my part, was absolutely justified. There was no three-revert WP:AVOIDEDITWAR violation. Lumbering in thought (talk) 21:43, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

• WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE tells us not to try to write the article in the infobox. Using a photo essay in the infobox falls foul of this and advice at WP:COLLAGE as to when a collage is acceptable: where overlapping or similar careful placement of component images is necessary to illustrate a point in an encyclopedic way [emphasis added]. This is not such a case. Multiple image captions just bloat the infobox and WP:TOOMUCH detail for any particular image just exacerbates the problem. WP:LEADIMAGE is telling use to pick an iconic [single] image for the lead. Cinderella157 (talk) 04:17, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

  We've already discussed getting the new photo from the Iraq War page. We know this, yet instead of us creating a new topic that addresses the issue holistically either here or the w:Talk:Iraq_War page, it seems WP:POV to only bring that up in response to us agreeing about finding a single image in a collage problematic. Lumbering in thought (talk) 22:01, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Saddam Hussein in 1998 (3x4 close cropped).png

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 08:57, 5 December 2025 (UTC)

Why is this a separate article?

This information can/should be merged with the article Iraq War. ~2026-10431-75 (talk) 15:54, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

It would be unmanageable. Slatersteven (talk) 16:50, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Citation for the Length of the initial invasion

there is an issue with the Federation of American Scientists page that is the [25] citation, as when you visit the page it comes up with an error 404 message. ~2026-14669-95 (talk) 18:37, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Article concerns and classification

The article is rated a B-class. The B-class criteria #1 states: The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations. It has reliable sources, and any important or controversial material which is likely to be challenged is cited.

The "External links " section is too long.

• Articles with unsourced statements from January 2013
• Articles with unsourced statements from February 2014
• Articles with unsourced statements from November 2022
• Articles with unsourced statements from April 2023
• Articles with unsourced statements from January 2025
• Articles with unsourced statements from March 2026 -- Otr500 (talk) 18:31, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

What are they? Slatersteven (talk) 18:36, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

I am guessing "unsourced statements," but I haven't looked at it yet. I ran across the article at lunch, saw it was B-classed, and had several challenges. I just came in from work and saw this message.

In the "Other areas" subsection (first paragraph), "U.S. special forces had also been involved in the extreme south of Iraq, attempting to occupy key roads to Syria and air bases. In one case two armored platoons were used to convince Iraqi leadership that an entire armored battalion was entrenched in the west of Iraq." -- Otr500 (talk) 00:37, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Removed now. Slatersteven (talk) 09:40, 7 August 2026 (UTC)