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The Iraq War, also known as the Second Persian Gulf
War, the Occupation of Iraq, or Operation Iraqi Freedom,
is an ongoing military campaign which began on March 20,
2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a multinational force
now led by and composed almost entirely of troops from
the United States and United Kingdom.
Prior to the war, the governments of the U.S. and U.K
claimed that Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) posed an imminent threat to their
security and that of their coalition allies. United
Nations weapons inspectors found no evidence of WMD,
giving support to earlier criticism of poor intelligence
on the subject. After the invasion, the U.S.-led Iraq
Survey Group concluded that Iraq had ended its WMD
programs in 1991 and had no active programs at the time
of the invasion, but that they intended to resume
production if the Iraq sanctions were lifted. Although
some degraded remnants of misplaced or abandoned
chemical weapons from before 1991 were found, they were
not the weapons for which the coalition invaded. Some
U.S. officials also accused Saddam Hussein of harboring
and supporting Al-Qaeda but no evidence of any
collaborative relationship was ever found. Other reasons
for the invasion stated by U.S. officials included
Iraq's financial support for the families of Palestinian
suicide bombers, Iraqi government human rights abuses,
and an effort on the part of the coalition forces to
spread democracy in the country and region. Some
officials said Iraq's oil reserves were a factor in the
decision to invade, but other officials denied this.
The invasion of Iraq led to an occupation and the
eventual capture and execution of Saddam Hussein.
Violence against coalition forces and among various
sectarian groups soon led to asymmetric warfare with the
Iraqi insurgency, strife between many Sunni and Shia
Iraqi groups, and al-Qaeda operations in Iraq. The
number of Iraqis killed through 2007 ranges from "a
conservative cautious minimum" of more than 85,000
civilians to a survey estimate of more than 1,000,000
citizens. UNHCR estimates the war uprooted 4.7 million
Iraqis through April 2008 (about 16% of the population
of Iraq), two million of whom had fled to neighbouring
countries fleeing a humanitarian situation that the Red
Cross described in March 2008 as "among the most
critical in the world". In June 2008, U.S. defense
officials claimed security and economic indicators began
to show signs of improvement in what they hailed as
significant and fragile gains. In August 2008, Iraq was
fifth on the Failed States Index.
Member nations of the Coalition withdrew their forces as
public opinion favoring troop withdrawals increased and
as Iraqi forces began to take responsibility for
security. In late 2008, the U.S. and Iraqi governments
approved a Status of Forces Agreement effective through
January 1, 2012.The Iraqi Parliament also ratified a
Strategic Framework Agreement with the U.S., aimed at
ensuring international cooperation in constitutional
rights, threat deterrence, education, energy
development, and other areas. In late February 2009,
U.S. President Barack Obama announced an 18-month
withdrawal window for "combat forces", leaving behind
30,000 to 50,000 troops "to advise and train Iraqi
security forces and to provide intelligence and
surveillance". General Ray Odierno, the top U.S.
military commander in Iraq, said he believes all U.S.
troops will be out of the country by the end of 2011,
while British forces ended combat operations on April
30, 2009. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said
he supports the accelerated pullout of U.S. forces.
See also: Lead up to the Iraq War, Rationale for the
Iraq War, Public relations preparations for 2003
invasion of Iraq, Governments' pre-war positions on
invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, 10 Days
to War, and Iraq and weapons of mass destruction
Main articles: Iraq disarmament crisis timeline
2001-2003 and 2002 in Iraq
According to documents provided by former Treasury
Secretary Paul O'Neill, George W. Bush instructed his
aides to look for a way to overthrow the Iraqi regime
ten days after taking office in January 2001. A secret
memo entitled "Plan for post-Saddam Iraq" was discussed
in January and February 2001, and a Pentagon document
dated March 5, 2001, and entitled "Foreign Suitors for
Iraqi Oilfield contracts", included a map of potential
areas for exploration.
The issue of Iraq's disarmament reached a crisis in
2002-2003, when President Bush demanded a complete end
to alleged Iraqi production of weapons of mass
destruction and full compliance with UN Resolutions
requiring UN weapons inspectors unfettered access to
suspected weapons production facilities. Previously, the
UN had prohibited Iraq from developing or possessing
such weapons after the Gulf War and required Iraq to
permit inspections confirming compliance.
During 2002, Bush repeatedly backed demands for
unfettered inspection and disarmament with threats of
military force. In accordance with UN Security Council
Resolution 1441 Iraq reluctantly agreed to new
inspections in late 2002. The results of these
inspections were mixed, with the inspectors discovering
no WMD programs but concluding that Iraqi declarations
failed to prove that all such weapons had been properly
destroyed.
In the initial stages of the war on terror, the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), under George Tenet, was
rising to prominence as the lead agency in the
Afghanistan war. But when Tenet insisted in his personal
meetings with President Bush that there was no
connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, Vice-President
Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
initiated a secret program to re-examine the evidence
and marginalize the CIA and Tenet. A major part of this
program was a Pentagon unit known as the Office of
Special Plans (OSP), which was created by Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and headed by
Douglas Feith. It was created to supply senior Bush
administration officials with raw intelligence
pertaining to Iraq, unvetted by intelligence analysts,
and circumventing traditional intelligence gathering
operations by the CIA. The questionable intelligence
acquired by the OSP was "stovepiped" to Cheney and
presented to the public. In some cases, Cheney’s office
would leak the intelligence to news correspondents, who
would in turn cover it in such outlets such as The New
York Times. Cheney would subsequently appear on the
Sunday political television talk shows to discuss the
intelligence, referencing The New York Times as the
source to give it credence.
Prior to the Gulf War, in
1990, Iraq had stockpiled 550 short tons (500 t) of
yellowcake uranium at the tha nuclear complex about
20 kilometres (12 mi) south of Baghdad. In late February
2002, the CIA sent former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to
investigate reports that Iraq was attempting to purchase
additional yellowcake from Niger. Wilson returned and
informed the CIA that reports of yellowcake sales to
Iraq were "unequivocally wrong." The Bush
administration, however, continued to allege Iraq's
attempts to obtain additional yellowcake were a
justification for military action - most prominently in
the January, 2003 State of the Union address when
President Bush said that Iraq had sought uranium, citing
British intelligence sources. In response, Wilson
wrote a critical New York Times op-ed piece in June 2003
stating that he had personally investigated claims of
yellowcake purchases and believed them to be fraudulent.
After Wilson's op-ed, Wilson's wife was publicly
identified as an undercover CIA analyst Valerie Plame in
a column. This led to a Justice Department investigation
into the source of the leak. On May 1, 2005 the "Downing
Street memo" was published in The Sunday Times. It
contained an overview of a secret July 23, 2002 meeting
among British government, Ministry of Defence, and
British intelligence figures who discussed the build-up
to the Iraq war — including direct references to
classified U.S. policy of the time. The memo stated,
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action,
justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But
the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the
policy."
On September 18, 2002, George Tenet briefed Bush that
Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.
Bush dismissed this top-secret intelligence from
Saddam's inner circle which was approved by two senior
CIA officers, but it turned out to be completely
accurate. The information was never shared with Congress
or even CIA agents examining whether Saddam had such
weapons. The CIA had contacted Saddam Hussein's foreign
minister, Naji Sabri, who was being paid by the French
as an agent. Sabri informed them that Saddam had
ambitions for a nuclear program but that it was not
active, and that no biological weapons were being
produced or stockpiled, although research was underway.
In September 2002, the Bush administration, the
CIA and the DIA said attempts by Iraq to acquire
high-strength aluminum tubes, which were prohibited
under the UN monitoring program, pointed to a
clandestine effort to make enriched uranium for nuclear
bombs. This analysis was opposed by the United
States Department of Energy (DOE) and INR which was
significant because of DOE's expertise in gas
centrifuges and nuclear weapons programs. The DOE and
INR argued that such tubes were poorly suited for
centrifuges. An effort by the DOE to change Colin
Powell's comments before his UN appearance was rebuffed
by the administration. Indeed, Powell, in his address to
the UN Security Council just prior to the war, made
reference to the aluminum tubes. But a report released
by the Institute for Science and International Security
in 2002 reported that it was highly unlikely that the
tubes could be used to enrich uranium. Powell later
admitted he had presented an inaccurate case to the
United Nations on Iraqi weapons, and the intelligence he
was relying on was, in some cases, "deliberately
misleading." Shortly after the United States
presidential election, 2008, and the election of rival
Democratic party nominee Barack Obama, president Bush
admitted that "my biggest regret of all the presidency
has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq.
source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War
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