Iraq War Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
70 free Iraq War trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Iraq War trivia quiz covers the 2003-2011 conflict from the run-up (the Iraq Liberation Act, Resolution 1441, Hans Blix, Colin Powell and 'Curveball', the largest protests in history) through the invasion itself: shock and awe, the Dora Farms strike, Nasiriyah and Jessica Lynch, the fall of Baghdad on 9 April 2003 and the Firdos Square statue, and the 'Mission Accomplished' speech aboard USS Abraham Lincoln. It then follows the occupation and insurgency: Paul Bremer and CPA Order 1, the deaths of Uday and Qusay, Saddam's capture in a spider hole and his execution, Abu Ghraib, the two battles of Fallujah, Zarqawi and al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Samarra shrine bombing and civil war, the Anbar Awakening, Petraeus and the 2007 surge, Blackwater at Nisour Square, Muntadhar al-Zaidi's shoes, and the withdrawal completed under Obama in December 2011. There are also questions on the Chilcot Report, casualties and costs, and the rise of the Islamic State. Some questions any news-watcher of the 2000s will remember; others are for serious students of the war. Every answer has been checked against primary sources, chiefly the Wikipedia articles on the war and its major events, and each explanation adds one further detail. For the 1991 conflict, try our Gulf War quiz.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What nickname was given to the massive air assault that opened the 2003 invasion of Iraq?
Shock and awe
Shock and awe was a strategy devised at the US National Defense University to break an enemy's will to fight, not just destroy its forces.
Q 02What was the US code name for the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam?
Operation Iraqi Freedom
Operation Iraqi Freedom took Baghdad in about three weeks, yet US troops then stayed in Iraq for more than eight years.
Q 03Which US general led the 2003 invasion as commander of Central Command?
Tommy Franks
Tommy Franks had already commanded the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan that drove the Taliban from power.
Q 04Which 1998 US law made removing Saddam Hussein's regime official American policy?
Iraq Liberation Act
The Iraq Liberation Act was signed by Bill Clinton, so regime change in Iraq was US policy years before George W. Bush's invasion.
Q 05In his 2002 State of the Union, Bush grouped Iraq with which two other countries in an 'Axis of Evil'?
Iran and North Korea
Iran and North Korea were accused alongside Iraq in Bush's January 2002 speech of seeking weapons of mass destruction.
Q 06What did UN Resolution 1441 threaten if Iraq kept violating its obligations?
Serious consequences
Serious consequences was vague wording: the US and Britain later said it allowed war, while France said a new UN vote was needed first.
Q 07Who chaired UNMOVIC, the UN inspection commission that returned to Iraq in late 2002?
Hans Blix
Hans Blix told the Security Council that verifying Iraq's disarmament would take 'not years, nor weeks, but months'; the invasion went ahead within two weeks.
Q 08Colin Powell's 5 February 2003 UN presentation relied on an Iraqi defector in Germany with what codename?
Curveball
Curveball, the defector Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, admitted in 2011 that he invented his tales of mobile bioweapons trucks to help topple Saddam.
Q 09In his final ultimatum before the invasion, President Bush gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours to do what?
Leave Iraq
Leave Iraq: Saddam ignored the deadline, and the war opened with a strike on Dora Farms, a Baghdad retreat where the CIA believed he was staying.
Q 10Which Leader of the House of Commons resigned from Britain's cabinet in protest against the 2003 invasion of Iraq?
Robin Cook
Robin Cook resigned on the eve of the Commons vote; 139 Labour MPs then rebelled, but the House still approved war by 412 votes to 149.
Q 11Which German foreign minister told Rumsfeld in Munich in 2003, 'Excuse me, I am not convinced!'?
Joschka Fischer
Joschka Fischer broke off his German speech to say it to Rumsfeld in English, and Germany refused to join the invasion.
Q 12Which Picasso painting's UN tapestry copy was covered with a curtain during Colin Powell's February 2003 case for war?
Guernica
Guernica, Picasso's image of a bombed Basque town, was hidden behind a blue curtain; UN officials said it was done for the TV cameras.
Q 13Which US Army chief of staff told the Senate securing Iraq would take 'several hundred thousand soldiers'?
Eric Shinseki
Q 21What slowed the coalition advance toward Najaf and Karbala in the first weeks of the invasion?
A severe sandstorm
A severe sandstorm halted the 3rd Infantry Division's drive between Najaf and Karbala and stopped troops calling in air cover during fighting.
Q 22Which nickname did the media give Iraq's information minister for his briefings as US forces closed in on Baghdad?
Comical Ali
Comical Ali, as the media dubbed Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, became a cult figure, with a US fan website, T-shirts and mugs.
Q 23In which Baghdad plaza was the giant statue of Saddam pulled down as the city fell?
Firdos
Firdos Square's statue came down to a Marine recovery vehicle, after a Marine covered Saddam's face with a US flag that was then swapped for an Iraqi one.
Eric Shinseki's estimate was called 'wildly off the mark' by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who argued other countries would help shoulder postwar Iraq.
Q 14Which former ambassador's op-ed on the Niger uranium claim led to the outing of his CIA-officer wife?
Joseph C. Wilson
Joseph C. Wilson wrote that he found no sign of a Niger uranium deal, and within days the White House retracted the claim.
Q 15Which UN secretary-general said in 2004 that the invasion 'was not in conformity with the UN Charter'?
Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan told the BBC the invasion was illegal, saying the decision to act should have been made by the Security Council, not unilaterally.
Q 16Which Kurdish force did CIA and JSOC teams organize as the northern front of the invasion?
Peshmerga
Peshmerga fighters, backed by US special forces, took the oil city of Kirkuk in April 2003 as Iraqi forces collapsed.
Q 17Which country's parliament narrowly failed in 2003 to approve letting US troops invade Iraq from its territory?
Turkey
Turkey's parliament said no despite a US aid offer worth billions, so tanks waiting on ships off its coast had to sail around Arabia to Kuwait.
Q 18Which Iraqi port did the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit and Polish GROM attack in the opening days?
Umm Qasr
Umm Qasr's defenders held out for several days, and once its waters were cleared of mines the port became the entry point for humanitarian aid.
Q 19In the deck of playing cards issued to US troops showing Iraq's most-wanted officials, which card was Saddam Hussein?
The ace of spades
Saddam Hussein was the ace of spades; the Defense Intelligence Agency designed the deck so troops would learn wanted faces while passing the time playing cards.
Q 20Jessica Lynch was captured after her unit, the 507th Maintenance Company, was ambushed in which battle?
Nasiriyah
Nasiriyah's hospital is where US special forces later rescued Lynch, but Iraqi doctors there said she had no bullet or stab wounds, contradicting early reports.
Q 24Which taunt did President Bush aim at militants attacking US troops in Iraq in July 2003?
Bring 'em on
Bring 'em on, Bush said; in 2006 he said he regretted the phrase, which he felt had been misinterpreted in parts of the world.
Q 25Aboard which aircraft carrier did Bush deliver his 'Mission Accomplished' speech on 1 May 2003?
USS Abraham Lincoln
USS Abraham Lincoln received Bush in a Navy jet, the first sitting president to land on a carrier by plane, though the White House later conceded a helicopter could have made the trip.
Q 26Who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority from May 2003 until it dissolved in June 2004?
Paul Bremer
Paul Bremer handed sovereignty to Iraq's interim government two days earlier than expected, in a surprise, low-key ceremony.
Q 27What did CPA Order 1, issued on 16 May 2003, do?
Purged senior Ba'ath Party members
It purged senior Ba'ath Party members from public jobs, and thousands of teachers were dismissed though joining the party had been all but required of them.
Q 28A raid by the 101st Airborne on 22 July 2003 killed which two men?
Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay
Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay died in a Mosul house after an informant gave them up; troops fired almost a dozen missiles, and Qusay's teenage son was also killed.
Q 29Which UN envoy was killed in the August 2003 bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad?
Sérgio Vieira de Mello
Sérgio Vieira de Mello lay trapped in the rubble for hours before he died, and within weeks the UN withdrew most of its 600 staff from Iraq.
Q 30What was the code name of the mission that captured Saddam Hussein on 13 December 2003?
Red Dawn
Red Dawn's raids on its two target sites came up empty, and it was a follow-up search of the same area that turned up Saddam.