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The Iraq War
Also known as the Second Gulf War, Operation Iraqi Freedom (US),
Operation TELIC (UK) or the occupation of Iraq, is an ongoing
conflict which began on March 20, 2003 with the United States-led
invasion of Iraq by a multinational coalition composed of U.S. and
U.K. troops supported by smaller contingents from Australia, Poland,
and other nations.
The main rationale for the invasion offered by U.S. President George W.
Bush and coalition supporters was the allegation that Iraq possessed and
was actively developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in violation of
a 1991 agreement. U.S. officials argued that Iraq posed an
imminent, urgent, and immediate threat to the United States, its people,
allies, and interests. The supporting intelligence was widely
criticized, and weapons inspectors found no evidence of WMD. After
the invasion, the Iraq Survey Group concluded that Iraq had ended its WMD
programs in 1991 and had none at the time of the invasion, but that they
intended to resume production if and when the Iraq sanctions were
lifted. Although some earlier degraded remnants of misplaced or
abandoned WMD were found, they were not the weapons for which the
coalition invaded. Some U.S. officials claimed Saddam Hussein and
al-Qaeda had been cooperating, but no evidence of any collaborative
relationship has been found. Other reasons for the invasion stated
by officials included concerns over Iraq's financial support for the
families of Palestinian suicide bombers, Iraqi government human rights
abuses, spreading democracy, and Iraq's oil reserves.
The invasion led to the quick defeat of the Iraqi military, the flight of
President Saddam Hussein, his capture in December, 2003 and his execution
in December, 2006. The U.S.-led coalition occupied Iraq and attempted to
establish a new democratic government. But shortly after the initial
invasion, violence against coalition forces and among various sectarian
groups led to asymmetric warfare with the Iraqi insurgency, civil war
between many Sunni and Shia Iraqis, and al-Qaeda operations in
Iraq. Estimates of the number of people killed range from over
150,000 to more than 1 million. The financial cost of the war has
been more than £4.5 billion ($9 billion) to the UK, and over $845
billion to the U.S., with the total cost to the U.S. economy estimated at
$3 to 5 trillion. Member nations of the Coalition began to withdraw
their forces as public opinion favoring troop withdrawals increased and as
Iraqi forces began to take responsibility for security. Because of
several similarities, namely that the war has dragged on without
success and with continuing casualties inflicted by insurgents, the
war has often been referred to as another Vietnam War for the United
States.
1991–2003: U.N. inspectors and the no-fly zones
Following the 1991 Gulf War, the United Nations Security Council
Resolution 687 mandated that Iraqi chemical, biological, nuclear, and long
range missile programs be halted and all such weapons destroyed under
United Nations Special Commission control. U.N. weapons inspectors inside
Iraq were able to verify the destruction of a large amount of WMD-material,
but substantial issues remained unresolved after they left Iraq in 1998
due to current UNSCOM head Richard Butler's belief that U.S. and U.K.
military action was imminent. Shortly after the inspectors withdrew, the
U.S. and U.K. launched a four-day bombing campaign.
In addition to the inspection regimen, the U.S. and U.K (along with France
until 1998) engaged in a low-level conflict with Iraq by enforcing
northern and southern Iraqi no-fly zones. These zones were created
following the Persian Gulf War to protect Iraqi Kurdistan in the north and
the southern Shia areas, and were seen by the Iraqi government as an
infringement of Iraq's sovereignty. Iraqi air-defense installations and
American and British air patrols regularly exchanged fire during this
period.
In April 2001, Bush's Cabinet agreed to use military intervention in Iraq,
because it was considered a destabilizing influence to the flow of oil to
international markets from the Middle East. Neoconservatives in the
U.S. called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields and planned for a
coup d'etat long before the September 11th attacks, hoping a new
government would use, "Iraq's oil to destroy the OPEC cartel through
massive increases in production above OPEC quotas." Those plans were
abandoned shortly after the invasion because former Shell Oil Company CEO
Philip Carroll, who had been charged with their implementation, refused to
be involved with Iraqi oil industry privatization since it could have led
to the exclusion of U.S. firms, unlike the state-run oil
ministry. U.S. oil industry consultant Falah Aljibury alleged that
soon after Bush took office in 2001, he took part in secret meetings in
Washington, the Middle East, and California involving an overthrow of the
Iraq regime. Aljibury told BBC's Newsnight that he, "interviewed potential
successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration."
Approximately one year before Operation Iraqi Freedom, the U.S. initiated
Operation Southern Focus as a change to its response strategy, by
increasing the overall number of missions and selecting targets throughout
the no-fly zones in order to disrupt the military command structure in
Iraq. The weight of bombs dropped on Iraq increased from none in March
2002 and 0.3 in April to between eight and 14 tons per month in
May-August. The total reached a pre-war peak of 54.6 tons in September
2002.
2001–2003: Iraq disarmament crisis and pre-war
intelligence
U.N. weapons inspections resume
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 no discovery of
WMDs and skepticism of Iraqi WMD program declarations.
Alleged weapons of mass destruction
In the initial stages of the war on terror, the Central Intelligence
Agency, 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. The questionable intelligence acquired by this secret
program 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.
Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson.
In late February 2002, the CIA sent former
Ambassador Joseph Wilson to investigate dubious claims about Iraq's
attempted purchase of yellowcake uranium 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 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 The
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. Wilson's report did not clarify the matter for analysts, but
they found it interesting that the former Nigerien Prime Minister said an
Iraqi delegation had visited Niger for what he believed was to discuss
uranium sales. Shortly after Wilson's op-ed, the identity of Wilson's
wife, undercover CIA analyst Valerie Plame, was revealed in a column by
Robert Novak. Since it is a felony to reveal the identity of a CIA agent
Novak's column launched an investigation by the Justice Department into
the source of the leak. In March, 2007, Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff I.
Lewis 'Scooter' Libby was convicted of perjury in the Plame leak
investigation. The source of the leak was found to be former deputy
secretary of state Richard Armitage, who was never charged with the crime.
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
U.K. Labour government, defense, and 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. The U.S. obtained three
subsequent human intelligence reports indicating that Saddam had
authorized the use of chemical weapons in the event of war.
In September 2002, the Bush administration said attempts by Iraq to
acquire thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes pointed to a clandestine
program to make enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. Iraq was not permitted
to import such tubes under the U.N. monitoring plan. This view was
supported by the CIA and DIA but opposed by the Department of Energy (DOE)
and INR which was significant because the DOE was the only department in
the United States government that had expertise in gas centrifuges and
nuclear weapons programs. All agencies believed the tubes could be used in
a centrifuge program but the latter two argued that they were poorly
suited to do so.An effort by the DOE to change Powell's comments
before his UN appearance was rebuffed by the administration. Indeed, Colin Powell, in his address to the U.N. 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."
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