Iraq War
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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."