On March 19, 2003, the United States invaded Iraq.

This season of Slow Burn is about the events and arguments that led up to that day.

So now you know where we're going to end up.

But where do we start?

George W. Bush made the call to launch the invasion, but it wasn't what he'd come into office to do.

Bush, like any president, was influenced by people in his administration.

Some of them had been spooked by 9-11.

Others had been pushing to get rid of Saddam for a lot longer.

You'll hear about all of that later in this series.

But in this episode, I'm going to tell you about someone else.

His name was Ahmed Chalabi, and deposing Saddam Hussein was his life's work.

Saddam is an insult to my being.

He's an insult to my country.

He's an insult to our history, to our culture.

Chalabi was an aristocrat, an Iraqi exile who was brilliant and charismatic.

He was also a bullshit virtuoso with a core of absolute conviction.

You might have heard of him.

He played a very public role in the push for war after 9-11.

But what you might not know is that he tried to start another war with Iraq a few years earlier. And he got weirdly close to

pulling it off. So let's start there. In 1995, the U.S. had defeated Saddam in the Gulf War

four years earlier, but he remained in power.

He had a big army, and he was still a brutal dictator.

...