Air raid sirens screamed as bombers from the United States and the United Kingdom launched missile strikes on Baghdad. Countries in the Middle East and Western Europe condemned the military action. And antiwar groups were up in arms.

An assault on Iraq without the support of much of the international community and over the cries of the antiwar movement — it all sounds very familiar. Yet the bombing in question came on February 16, 2001, two years before the American invasion of Iraq and less than a month after George W. Bush’s inauguration.

While now largely forgotten, the strikes garnered significant media coverage at the time and marked the first time since 1998 that the US and the UK had bombed Iraq outside of the so-called “no-fly zone.” For the Left, the strikes represented a significant escalation. But Bush saw them as “routine.”