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The Iraq War (March 20, 2003 to present), sometimes known as Gulf War 2,[1] is an ongoing war that began with the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Part of the rationale for the war offered by the George W. Bush administration and many Republican and Democratic members of Congress at the time of invasion was that Iraq possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction which posed a growing threat [2] to the United States and the world community. In Bush's 2003 State of the Union he stated that the U.S. must not wait until the threat is imminent because Saddam would not announce his intentions before attacking. [3] However, after the invasion, no evidence was found of such weapons programs. Other U.S. officials have cited claims of Saddam Hussein's alleged connection to Al-Qaeda and human rights abuse in Saddam Hussein's Iraq as reasons for the war. They have also claimed that the economic importance of Iraq's oil supply limited non-military options, while many critical commentators have alleged that this factor was a primary reason .