“At six P.M. Baghdad time, March 20 [2003]…the U.S. air campaign against Iraq began. Over the next twenty-four hours, American and British warplanes flew a staggering seventeen hundred combat sorties against hundreds of targets inside Iraq. At the same time, U.S. Navy warships and U.S. Air Force B-52 bombers launched 504 cruise missiles, which systematically took out dozens of Hussein’s presidential palaces, military command centers, and large military garrisons in the most heavily defended parts of Iraq, particularly in and around Baghdad itself.”
– Matthew M. Aid, The Secret Sentry, Pages 251-252