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Date 02:30 UTC March 20, 2003–April 15, 2003 Place Prelude Stated Mission neutralizing alleged weapons of mass destruction, overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Targets alleged weapons of mass destruction, President Saddam Hussein and his government cabinet/military officers. Results |
The 2003 invasion of Iraq (also known as the Iraq War or 2nd Persian Gulf War) began on March 20, 2003, when forces belonging primarily to the United States and the United Kingdom invaded Iraq. Ground forces from Australia and Poland and naval forces from Australia, Denmark and SpainThe Kingdom of Spain is a country located in the southwest of Europe. It shares the Iberian Peninsula with Portugal, Gibraltar and Andorra. To the northeast, along the Pyrenees mountain range, it borders France and the tiny principality of Andorra. It inc played minor roles. After approximately three weeks of fighting, Iraq's Ba'athistThe Baath Parties (also spelled Baath or Bath; Arabic: اﻟﺒﻌﺚ) comprise political parties representing the political face of the Baath movement. The original Ba'ath Party functioned as a pan-Arab party with branches in dif government was toppled and the 2003 occupation of Iraq began. There was opposition to the invasion from many in the international community (see worldwide government positions on war on Iraq).
The start of hostilities came after the expiration of a 48-hour deadline which was set by U.S. PresidentThe President of the United States is the head of state of the United States. Under the U. Constitution, the President is also the chief executive of the federal government and commander in chief of the armed forces. Because of the superpower status of th George W. Bush, demanding that Saddam Hussein and his two sons Uday and Qusay leave Iraq, ending the diplomatic Iraq disarmament crisis; see George W. Bush speech of March 17, 2003
The US military operations in this war were conducted under the name of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The UK military operations in this war were conducted under the name of Operation Telic. The Australian code name was Operation Falconer.
250,000 United States troops, with support from approximately 45,000 British, 2,000 Australian and 200 Polish combat forces, entered Iraq primarily through their staging area in Kuwait. Plans for an invasion force from the north were abandoned when Turkey refused the use of its territory for such purposes. Coalition forces also supported Iraqi Kurdish militia troops, estimated to number upwards of 50,000. Included in these forces were groups of Australian SAS and Commando Personnel who performed Recon and combat search and rescue mission along side American and British SF units.
Since the end of the Persian Gulf War of 1991, relations between the United States and Iraq remained poor. Hopes that Saddam Hussein's government would be overthrown from within had never come to pass, and fears that he was developing weapons of mass destruction in violation of UN resolutions remained. In the absence of a Security Council consensus that Iraq had fully complied with the terms of the Persian Gulf War ceasefire, both the UN and the US enforced various economic sanctions against Iraq throughout the Clinton administration, and patrolled Iraqi airspace to enforce Iraqi no-fly zones. In 1998 the United States Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act which stated "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq."
The Republican Party's campaign platform in the U.S. presidential election, 2000 called for "full implementation" of the act and removal of Saddam Hussein with a focus on rebuilding a coalition, tougher sanctions, reinstating inspections, and support for the pro-democracy, opposition exile group, Iraqi National Congress.
In September 2000, in the Rebuilding America's Defenses (pg. 17) report [1], Project for the New American Century, a largely Republican think tank, advocated that the United States shift to more ground based air forces to help contain the regime of Saddam Hussein so that "the demand for carrier presence in the region can be relaxed". Upon the election of George W. Bush as president, many concerned advocates of such a policy (including some of those who wrote the 2000 report) were included in the new administration's foreign policy circle. According to former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, an attack was planned since the inauguration, and the first security council meeting discussed plans on invasion of the country. One year later, on the day of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is reported to have written in his notes, "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]". Shortly thereafter, the George W. Bush administration announced a War on Terrorism, accompanied by the doctrine of preemptive military action dubbed the Bush doctrine. At some point after September 11th, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the United States that Iraq was planning terrorist attacks in the US. Even so, "the September 11 commission released a staff report that said it found 'no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.'" [2]
In 2002 the Iraq disarmament crisis arose primarily as a diplomatic situation. In October 2002, the United States Congress granted President Bush the authority to wage war against Iraq. The Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq was worded so as to encourage, but not require, UN Security Council approval for military action. In November 2002, United Nations actions regarding Iraq culminated in the unanimous passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 and the resumption of weapons inspections. The United States also began preparations for an invasion of Iraq, with a host of diplomatic, public relations and military preparations.
See The UN Security Council and the Iraq war and Public relations preparations for 2003 invasion of Iraq for more details
In the wake of the September 11th attacks and the relative success of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Bush administration felt that it had sufficient public support in the United States for further operations against perceived threats in the Middle East. The relations between the United States and Iraq had never improved since 1991, and the two nations remained in a state of low-level conflict marked by air-strikes, sanctions, and threats.
Throughout 2002, the administration made it clear that the elimination of the Saddam Hussein regime was a major goal, although it offered to accept major changes in Iraqi military and foreign policy in lieu of this. Specifically, the stated justification for the invasion included Iraqi production and use of weapons of mass destruction, links with terrorist organizations and human rights violations in Iraq under the Saddam Hussein government, issues that are detailed below.
To that end, the stated goals of the invasion, according to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, were to:
Many staff and supporters within the Bush administration had other, more ambitious goals for the war as well. Many hoped that the war could act as a catalyst for democracy and peace in the Middle East, and that once Iraq became democratic and prosperous other nations would quickly follow suit, and thus the social environment that allowed terrorism to flourish would be eliminated. However, for diplomatic reasons these goals were played down in favor of justifications that Iraq represented a specific threat to the United States and to international law. Little evidence was presented actually linking the government of Iraq to al Qaeda (see below).
Opponents of the Iraq war disagreed with many of the arguments presented by the administration, attacking them variously as being untrue, inadequate to justify a pre-emptive war, or likely to have results different from the administration's intentions. Further, they asserted various alternate reasons for the invasion. Different groups asserted that the war was fought primarily
Computer-generated image of an alleged mobile production facility for chemical weapons, presented by Colin Powell at the UN Security Council. Absence of more substantial proofs undermined the credibility of the speech on the international scene. Russian experts have always questioned the likelyhood of such mobile facilities, which are extremely dangerous and difficult to manage.
Ultimately, the war was presented as largely being a case of removing banned weapons from Iraq. Administration officials, especially with the United States Department of State led by Colin Powell were eager to make the cause for war as universally acceptable to as many nations as possible. Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense stated in an interview on May 28, 2003 in Vanity Fair that 'For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction'.
No weapons of mass destruction were found by the Iraq Survey Group, headed by inspector David Kay. Kay, who resigned as the Bush administration's top weapons inspector in Iraq, said U.S. intelligence services owed President Bush an explanation for having concluded that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. [3] However, the team claims to have found evidence of low-level WMD programs - a claim hotly disputed by many, with the Biosecurity Journal referring to the BW claims as a "worst case analysis" [4]
Also included in the list of postwar justifications is Libya's agreement to abandon its WMD programs, but Flynt Leverett (former senior director for Middle Eastern Affairs at the NSC) and Martin S. Indyk (former Clinton administration official) argue that the agreement was a result of good-faith negotiations. Libya had agreed to surrender its programs in 1999.
The Iraq Survey Group under Bush-appointed inspector David Kay in October reported discovering the following key points: "We have not yet found stocks of weapons", difficulty in explaining why, clandestine laboratories suitable for "preserving BW expertise" which contained equipment subject to UN monitoring, a prison laboratory complex which Kay describes as "possibly used in human testing of BW agents", strains of bacteria kept in one scientists home (including a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B), 12-year old documents and small parts concerning uranium enrichment kept found in a scientist's home [5], partially declared UAVs, capability to produce a type of fuel useful for Scud missiles, a scientist who had drawn plans for how to make longer-range missiles [6], and attempts to acquire missile technology from North Korea, and destroyed documents of unknown significance. [7]. Most topics concerning biological agents are discussed as "BW-applicable" or "BW-capable"; the report mentions nothing that was being used in such a context. Chemical weapons are referred to in a similar fashion. The nuclear program, according to the report, had not done any work since 1991, but had attempted to retain scientists and documentation from it in case sanctions were ever dropped.
However, Kay himself has since stated (concerning Iraqi WMDs): "We were almost all wrong - and I certainly include myself here", and has since been in the media trying to explain why the US believed Iraq was a threat when it actually had minimal to no programs (let alone weapons) concerning mass destruction. He has stated that many intelligence analysts have come to him "in apology that the world we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed" [8]. He has also directly contradicted since then much of the October report. David Kay is a Republican who donated money to both the RNC and the campaign of president George W. Bush. Before David Kay came out about this, many of his scientists had already done so. [9].
Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee during his oral report the following though: "Based on the intelligence that existed, I think it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Now that you know reality on the ground as opposed to what you estimated before, you may reach a different conclusion — although I must say I actually think what we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place, potentially, than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war."
Dr. Kay's team has established that the Iraqi regime had the production capacity and know-how to produce a great deal more chemical and biological weaponry when international economic sanctions were lifted, a policy change which was actively being sought by France, Germany and Russia.
The current situation concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction seems similar to that portrayed by Hussein Kamel in 1995 and that of Imad Khadduri [10], that Iraq had almost completely destroyed its programs, but sought to retain as much knowledge and information that, should sanctions ever end, the programs would not have to start over from scratch.
After the fall of Baghdad, U.S. officials claimed that Iraqi officials were being harbored in Syria, and several high-ranking Iraqis have since been detained after being expelled from Syria.
When the debate about the justification resumed given that no weapons of mass destruction were found, it was argued that the invasion was however justified because of human rights abuses committed by Saddam Hussein. Critics raise the question why the US government did not do much to prevent or to punish those crimes when they happened but use them years later for a war initially explained with different reasons. The use of chemical weapons against Kurds in 1983 was known by US intelligence, Donald Rumsfeld, at the time presidential envoy of Ronald Reagan, however spoke of "his close relationship" with Saddam Hussein at that time and visited him. After the Persian Gulf War the US government encouraged rebellions by the Shiites but did not intervene when Hussein crushed the rebels. [11] [12]
As of August, 2004 small quantities of chemically degraded mustard gas had been found in old munitions.
Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch has argued that the justification of "human rights" for the war in Iraq does not meet appropriate standards for the level of suffering that it causes.[13]
The United Nations announced a report on March 2, 2004 from the weapons inspection teams stating that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction of any significance after 1994. [14]
On August 2, 2004 Pres. Bush stated "Knowing what I know today we still would have gone on into Iraq. He had the capability of making weapons of mass destruction. He had terrorists ties … the decision I made is the right decision. The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power."[15]
On October 6, 2004 Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, appearing before the United States Senate Armed Services Committee announced that the group found no evidence that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had produced any weapons of mass destruction since 1991, when UN sanctions were imposed and, furthermore, were incapable of doing so. Though the report noted that Saddam had made it his primary goal to have sanctions lifted by whatever means neccesary, Saddam was effectively contained by these sanctions when they were in place. From the report: "[Saddam] wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted."[16]
However effective, UN sanctions fostered a growing humanitarian crisis in Iraq. International popular opinion seemed to shift in favour of lifting the sanctions and finding diplomatic alternatives such as targeted sanctions that might be as effective, but which would not inadvertently affect the Iraqi populace. Temporary solutions, such as the Oil for Food program, an easing of the sanctions on a controlled basis, had limited success in the face of corruption in the Iraqi government. Essentially, harsh sanctions originally intended to be temporary could not be kept in place indefinitely. In addition, Saddam's persistent efforts to sway certain UN Security Council members with money diverted from the Oil for Food program meant that sanctions had likely reached the limit of their usefulness.[17][18]
An alleged link between al Qaeda and Iraq was often mentioned in the run-up to war. Before the invasion, journalists were generally skeptical; for example, one January 2003 article in the San Jose Mercury News said the claim "stretches the analysis of U.S. intelligence agencies to, and perhaps beyond, the limit." [19] After the invasion, in January of 2004, Secretary Powell stated "I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."
What little evidence existed for a connection between the two turns out to have been misinformation coming from several sources, most notably an associate of Ahmed Chalabi who was given the code name "Curveball" and captured al Qaeda leader Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The Chalabi source has been thoroughly discredited, and the al Qaeda source has since recanted his story. Other al Qaeda leaders have confirmed that there was no operational relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, and indeed that Osama bin Laden had forbidden such a relationship with the Iraqi leader, whom he considered an infidel.
It was eventually shown that, while representatives of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda had indeed met, a working relationship was never realized and, by any measure, there was a deep sense of mistrust and dislike of one another afterwards. Osama Bin Laden was shown to view Iraq's ruling Ba'ath party as running contrary to his religion, calling it an "apostate regime." A British intelligence report [20] went so far as to say of Bin Laden "His aims are in ideological conflict with present day Iraq."
In 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, concluded that there was no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein had assisted al-Qaeda in preparing for or carrying out the 9/11 attacks.
Aside from the contentious allegations of Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda, the former regime is suspected by some to have had relationships with other militant organisations in the Middle East including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It is known that some $ 10-15M total was paid to the families of suicide bombers, presented as compensation for the demolition of their homes in Israeli collective punishment operations. Abu Abbas (associate with the PLO and the Achille Lauro hijacking) was found in Iraq, and had been wanted for quite some time. In August 2002, Abu Nidal (attacks in Italy and elsewhere) died in Baghdad from gunshot wounds while facing treason charges under Saddam's regime.
Some documents indicate that the leadership was attempting to distance itself from Islamist militants fighters instead of working with them [21], and that any connection between al Qaeda and Iraq is new. This was in relation to the rising insurgency in Iraq: Saddam was fearful that the foreign fighters might use this as an opportunity for themselves, rather that fight for Saddam to take control again. Many international jihadists have in fact begun operating in Iraq since the U.S. occupation began.
The Bush Administration also has cited links between Saddam Hussein's government and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose organization Jama'at al-Tawhid wal Jihad (Monotheism and Holy War) has taken credit for kidnappings and beheadings directed against the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Zarqawi is rumored to have been treated in an Iraqi hospital after being wounded in Afghanistan during the U.S. invasion. Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Zarqawi had settled in Kurdish northern Iraq (an area not controlled by Saddam Hussein's government) where he joined, and may have led, the terrorist organization Ansar al-Islam, which was an enemy of the Baathist regime. Nevertheless, U.S. officials continued to assert that Zarqawi constitutes an important link between Hussein's regime and al Qaeda. A CIA report in early October 2004 "found no clear evidence of Iraq harbouring Abu Musab al-Zarqawi." [22] Also, Zarqawi does not seem to have ever been, as some have asserted, an al Qaeda leader, and only pledged his allegiance to the al Qaeda organization in October 2004.[23] This pledge came two days after his insurgent organization in Iraq was officially declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.
On October 19, 2004, the International Institute for Strategic Studies published its annual report stating that the war in Iraq had actually increased the risk of terrorism against westerners in Arab countries[24].
See 2003–2004 occupation of Iraq timeline for the White House statements and 2003 Iraq war timeline for a more detailed account of the invasion.
Prior to invasion, the United States and other coalition forces involved in the 1991 Persian Gulf War had been engaged in a low-level conflict with Iraq, enforcing the Iraqi no-fly zones where Iraqi air-defense installations were engaged on a fairly regular basis. In mid- 2002, the U.S. began to change its response strategy, more carefully selecting targets in the southern part of the country in order to disrupt the military command structure in Iraq. A change in enforcement tactics was acknowledged at the time, but it was not made public that this was part of a plan known as Operation Southern Focus.
Previous to the invasion, many observers had expected a lengthy campaign of aerial bombing before any ground action began, taking as examples the Persian Gulf War or the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. In practice, U.S. plans envisioned simultaneous air and ground assaults to decapitate the regime as fast as possible (see Shock and Awe, attempting to bypass Iraqi military units and cities in most cases. The assumption was that superior U.S. mobility and coordination would allow the U.S. to attack the heart of the regime and destroy it in a short time, and that this would minimize civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure. It was presumed that the elimination of the leadership would lead to the collapse of the army and the regime, and that much of the population would support the invaders once the regime had been weakened. Occupation of cities and attacks on peripheral military units were viewed as undesirable distractions.
Following Turkey's decision to deny any use of its territory, the U.S. was forced to abandon a planned simultaneous attack from north and south, so the primary bases for the invasion were in Kuwait and other Persian Gulf nations. One result of this was that one of the divisions intended for the invasion was forced to relocate and was unable to take part in the invasion until well into the war. Many observers felt that the U.S. devoted insufficient troops to the invasion, and that this (combined with the failure to occupy cities) put them at a major disadvantage in achieving security and order throughout the country when local support failed to meet expectations.
The invasion was swift, with the collapse of the Iraq government and the military of Iraq in about three weeks. The oil infrastructure of Iraq was rapidly secured with limited damage in that time. Securing the oil infrastructure was considered important. In the first Persian Gulf War, while retreating from Kuwait, the Iraqi army had set many oil wells on fire, in an attempt to disguise troop movements and to distract Coalition forces and also create many environmental problems.
In keeping with the rapid advance plan, the U.S. Third Division moved westward and then northward through the desert toward Baghdad, while the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and a UK expeditionary force moved northward through marshland. All forces avoided major cities except when necessary to capture river crossings over the Tigris and Euphrates. UK forces entered Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, only after two weeks of conflict, although their control of the city was limited. Preexisting electrical and water shortages continued through the conflict and looting began as Iraqi forces collapsed. While British forces began working with local Iraqi Police to enforce order, humanitarian aid began to arrive from ships landing in the port city of Umm Qasr and trucks entering the country through Kuwait.
After a rapid initial advance, the first major pause occurred in the vicinity of Hillah and Karbala, where U.S. leading elements, hampered by dust storms, met heavy resistance from Iraqi troops and paused for some days for reinforcement before continuing toward Baghdad.
300px NASA Landsat 7 image of Baghdad, April 2, 2003.
Three weeks into the invasion, U.S. forces moved into Baghdad with limited resistance; Iraqi government officials had either disappeared or had conceded defeat. On April 9, 2003, Baghdad was formally secured by US forces and the regime of Saddam Hussein was declared to have ended. Saddam had vanished, and his whereabouts were unknown. Many Iraqis celebrated the downfall of Saddam by vandalizing his many portraits, statues and other pieces of his personality cult. One widely-publicized event was the dramatic toppling of a large statue of Saddam in central Baghdad by a US tank, while crowds of Iraqis apparently cheered the soldiers on. This event has been hotly disputed, with evidence that it was staged by US forces. More detail is available under media coverage.
General Tommy Franks assumed control of Iraq as the supreme commander of occupation forces. Shortly after the sudden collapse of the defense of Baghdad, rumors were circulating in Iraq and elsewhere that there had been a deal struck (a "safqua") wherein the US had bribed key members of the Iraqi military elite and/or the Ba'ath party itself to stand down. In May 2003, General Franks retired, and confirmed in an interview with Defense Week that the U.S. had paid Iraqi military leaders to defect. The extent of the defections and their effect on the war are unclear.
Coalition troops promptly began searching for the key members of Saddam Hussein's regime. These individuals were identified by a variety of means, most famously through sets of
most-wanted Iraqi playing cards.
In the north, Kurdish forces opposed to Saddam Hussein had already occupied for years an autonomous area in northern Iraq. With the assistance of U.S. Special Forces and airstrikes, they were able to rout the Iraqi units near them and to occupy oil-rich Kirkuk on April 10.
U.S. special forces had also been involved in the extreme west of Iraq, attempting to occupy key roads to Syria and airbases.
On April 15, U.S. forces mostly took control of Tikrit, the last major outpost in central Iraq.
Looting took place in the days following. It was reported that the National Museum of Iraq was among the looted sites. The assertion that US forces did not guard the museum because they were guarding the Ministry of Oil and Ministry of Interior is apparently true. According to U.S. officials the "reality of the situation on the ground" was that hospitals, water plants, and ministries with vital intelligence needed security more than other sites. There were only enough US troops on the ground to guard a certain number of the many sites that ideally needed protection, and so, apparently, some "hard choices" were made. U.S. troops topple a giant statue of Saddam in a propaganda event.
The FBI was soon called into Iraq to track down the stolen items. It was found that the initial claims of looting of substantial portions of the collection were somewhat exaggerated and for months people have been returning objects to the museum. Yet, as some of the dust has settled, thousands of antiquities are still missing including dozens from the main collection.
There has been speculation that some objects still missing were not taken by looters after the war, but were taken by Saddam Hussein or his entourage before or during the fighting. There have also been reports that early looters had keys to vaults that held rarer pieces, and some have speculated as to the systematic removal of key artifacts.
The National Museum Iraq was only one of many museums and sites of cultural significance that were affected by the war. Many in the arts and antiquities communities briefed policy makers in advance of the need to secure Iraqi museums. Despite the looting being lighter than initially feared, the cultural loss of items from ancient Sumeria is significant.
Zainab Bahrani , professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, reports that a helicopter landing pad was constructed in the heart of the ancient city of Babylon, and "removed layers of archeological earth from the site. The daily flights of the helicopters rattle the ancient walls and the winds created by their rotors blast sand against the fragile bricks. When my colleague at the site, Maryam Moussa, and I asked military personnel in charge that the helipad be shut down, the response was that it had to remain open for security reasons, for the safety of the troops." [25]Bahrani also reports that this summer "the wall of the Temple of Nabu and the roof of the Temple of Ninmah, both sixth century BC, collapsed as a result of the movement of helicopters."
Electrical power is scarce in post-war Iraq, Bahrani reports, and some fragile artifacts, including the Ottoman Archive, will not survive the loss of refrigeration.
On May 1, 2003 George W. Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, in a Lockheed S-3 Viking, where he gave a speech announcing the end of major combat operations in the Iraq war. Clearly visible in the background was a banner stating "Mission Accomplished". Bush's landing was criticized by opponents as an overly theatrical and expensive stunt. The banner, made by White House personnel (according to a CNN story [26]) and placed there by the U.S. Navy, was criticized as premature - especially later as the guerrilla war dragged on.
It was soon found that "major combat" being over did not mean that peace had returned to Iraq. The U.S.-led occupation of Iraq was marked by ongoing violent conflict between the Iraqi resistance and the occupying forces. As of September 8, 2004, the total deaths of American soldiers as a direct result of the Iraq invasion, had reached 1000 mostly young men. Of these, 818 lost their lives after the "end of major hostilities" announced by president Bush on May 1. There is currently growing concern being voiced from some in the U.S. comparing the situation to previous wars such as the Vietnam War.
The ongoing resistance in Iraq was concentrated in, but not limited to, an area referred to by Western media and the occupying forces as the Sunni triangle and Baghdad [27]. Critics point out that the regions where violence is most common are also the most populated regions. This resistance may be described as guerrilla warfare. The tactics in use were to include mortars, suicide bombers, roadside bombs, small arms fire, and RPGs, as well as sabotage against the oil infrastructure. There are also accusations, questioned by some, about attacks toward the power and water infrastructure.
There is evidence that some of the resistance was organized, perhaps by the fedayeen and other Saddam Hussein or Ba'ath loyalists, religious radicals, Iraqis angered by the occupation, and foreign fighters. [28]
After the war, information began to emerge about several failed Iraqi peace initiatives, including offers as extensive as allowing 5,000 FBI agents in to search the country for weapons of mass destruction, support for the US-backed Roadmap For Peace, and the abdication of Saddam Hussein to be replaced under UN elections.
See Support and opposition for the 2003 invasion of Iraq for the full article.
Support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq included 49 nations, a group that was frequently referred to as the " coalition of the willing". These nations provided combat troops, support troops, and logistical support for the invasion. The nations contributing combat forces were, roughly: United States (250,000), United Kingdom (45,000), Korea (3,500), Australia (2,000), Denmark (200), and Poland (54). Ten other countries were known to have offered small numbers of non-combat forces, mostly either medical teams and specialists in decontamination. In several of these countries a majority of the public was opposed to the war. In Spain polls reported at one time a 90% opposition to the war.
Popular opposition to war on Iraq led to global protests. In many Middle Eastern and Islamic countries, many protesters supported Saddam Hussein, but protesters in the United States and Europe generally did not. On the government level, the war was criticized by Canada[29], Belgium, Russia, France, the People's Republic of China, Germany, Switzerland, The Vatican, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, Mexico, the Arab League, the African Union and others. Though many nations opposed the war, none openly supported Saddam Hussein's government, and none volunteered any assistance to the Iraqi side.Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud said U.S. military could not use Saudi Arabia's soil in any way to attack Iraq. [30] After ten years of U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia, cited among reasons by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden for his al-Qaeda attacks on America on September 11, 2001, most of U.S. forces were withdrawn in 2003. [31] According to the New York Times, the invasion secretly received support from Saudi Arabia, which provided some airbases and tens of millions of dollars in discounted oil, gas, and fuel. [32]
There exists controversy on the question of whether the US intervention broke international law. The Bush administration thinks that the UN Security Council Resolutions authorizing the 1991 invasion, in addition to Resolution 1441, gave legal authority to use "…all necessary means…", which is diplomatic code for going to war. This war ended with a cease fire instead of a permanent peace treaty. Their view was that Iraq had violated the terms of the cease-fire by breaching two key conditions and thus made the invasion of Iraq a legal continuation of the earlier war. If a war can be reactivated ten years after the fact, it would imply that any nation that has ever been at war that ended in a cease-fire (such as Korea) could have the war restarted if any other party to the cease-fire agreement felt at any time that they were no longer meeting the conditions of the cease-fire that ended that war. Such is the purpose of using a cease-fire agreement in place of a peace treaty; the resumption of war is the penalty for, and thus deterrent of, engaging in the prohibited action(s).
Since the majority of the United Nations security council members (both permanent and rotating) did not support the attack, it appears that they viewed the attack as invalid under any resolution still in effect in March, 2003. Both Kofi Annan, current Secretary-General of the United Nations, and former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, as well as several nations, say that the attack violated international law as a war of aggression since it lacked the validity of a U.N. Security Council resolution to authorize military force, and was not an act of defence, and so violated the UN charter. However, none have called for the security council to consider sanctions against the United States or the other nations involved, both because of an effort to restore warmer relationships with the US, and because the attempt would be futile since the US have veto at the Security Council.
The United States and United Kingdom claim it was a legal action which they were within their rights to undertake. Along with Poland and Australia, the invasion was supported by the governments of several European nations, including the Czech Republic, Denmark, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, and Spain. In the countries whose governments supported the invasion, governements and media have called the good faith of the Council into question on this matter, on the grounds of the issues raised by trade with Iraq in violation of the sanctions, the corruption of the Oil for Food program and a resentment of the dominance of the USA that led to opposition irrespective of the merits.
In January 25, 2004, al Mada , a daily newspaper in Iraq, published a list of individuals and organizations who it says received oil sales contracts via the UN's Oil for Food program, from the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein. The list, which has caused the launch of a United Nations investigation on the Oil for Food program, has raised many concerns due to its similarity to other forgeries to come out of Iraq since last May. There has long been speculation, and recent evidence come to light in the popular media, that the Oil For Food program was being mismanaged and used to buy Hussein's regime covert international support and increase his personal fortune.
Many people did not regard Iraq's violation of UN resolutions to be a valid case for the war, asserting that no single nation has the authority to judge Iraq's compliance to UN resolutions and to enforce them. Furthermore, critics argued that the US was applying double standards of justice, noting that other nations such as Israel are also in breach of UN resolutions and have nuclear weapons; this argument is not a black and white matter, [33], as some claim that Iraq's history of actually using chemical weapons (against Iran and the Kurdish population in Iraq) suggested at the time that Iraq was a far greater threat. Others claim, also, that this contradicts previous U.S. policy, since the US was one of many nations that supplied chemical weapon precursors, even when well aware of what it was being used for. Eventually, clumsy declarations by some hard-line members of the Bush administration, such as Deputy Secretary for Defense Paul Wolfowitz's informative statement that "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on" [34] further undermined the legitimacy of the invasion, and international confidence in the good faith of the USA.
Although Iraq was known to have pursued an active nuclear weapons development program previously, as well tried to procure materials and equipment for their manufacture, these weapons and material have yet to be discovered. This casts doubt on some of the accusations against Iraq, despite previous UN assertions that Iraq likely harbored such weapons, and that Iraq failed to document and give UN inspectors access to areas suspected of illegal weapons production. Some believe, based on the circumstances, that the weapons were originally present in Iraq but were moved into a sympathetic country (or countries). However, there is no hard evidence supporting this theory.
In a poll conducted by Western media, 51% of Iraqis stated they opposed the foreign forces occupying Iraq, while 39% supported it. Over 65% of the 2,500 Iraqis polled said that their lives were better than before the war. 48% of Iraqis felt that the U.S.-led coalition was right to invade, compared with 39% said it was wrong. People were evenly divided on whether the invasion had humiliated or liberated Iraq. More than 40% said they had no confidence whatsoever in the British and U.S. forces, and 51% opposed the presence of any coalition forces in Iraq. Nearly 20% said attacks on foreign forces were acceptable, 14% said the same about attacks on the civilian administrators of the Coalition Provisional Authority and 10% on foreigners working with the CPA. A narrow majority said life was better without Saddam. Note that most of the sample was taken in relatively secured coalition-occupied territories. [35] [36]
US Casualties returning to Dover AFB in a C-17 See Casualties in the conflict in Iraq for details.
Possible estimates on the total number of people killed in the invasion and occupation of Iraq vary widely. All estimates below are as of November 24, 2004, and include the period covered in 2003 Occupation of Iraq as well as the period covered in this article.
| Iraqis | Counts of civilian deaths specifically documented range from 15,515 to 16,6731. A study in the Lancet estimates 100,000 deaths2, with roughly three times as many injured. | [37][38] (Lancet report [pdf]) [39] [40] |
| U.S. soldiers | 1,229 (between 9,326 and 25,000 injured) | [41][42][43] |
| Soldiers of other coalition countries | 146 | [44] |
| Non-Iraqi civilians | from 186 to 355 | [45] source |
This campaign has featured a variety of new and weighted terminology, much coined by the U.S. government and then repeated by the media. The name "Operation Iraqi Freedom", for example, expresses one viewpoint of the purpose of the invasion, and is almost never used outside the US. Also notable was the exclusive usage of "regime" to refer to the Saddam Hussein government (see also regime change), and " death squads" to refer to fedayeen paramilitary forces. Members of the Saddam Hussein government were called by disparaging nicknames - e.g., "Chemical Ali" ( Ali Hassan al-Majid), "Comical Ali" ( Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf), "Mrs Anthrax" ( Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash), while the president himself was systematically called "Saddam" instead of "Hussein" or "Saddam Hussein".
Other terminology introduced or popularized during the war include:
Many slogans and terms coined have come to be used against the Bush administration in the 2004 United States Presidential election, especially by online media .
Media coverage of this war was different in certain ways from that of the Persian Gulf War. Victoria Clarke, Assistant Defense Secretary (formerly with Hill and Knowlton, the PR firm infamous for promoting the false baby-incubator story during the first Persian Gulf War)[46] devised the Pentagon's policy of "embedding" reporters with military units. Viewers in the United States were able to watch U.S. tanks rolling into Baghdad live on television, with a split screen image of the Iraqi Minister of Information claiming that U.S. forces were not in the city. Many foreign observers of the media and especially the television coverage in the USA felt that it was excessively partisan and in some cases "gung-ho".
Another difference was the wide and independent coverage in the World Wide Web demonstrating that for web-surfers in rich countries and the elites in poorer countries, the Internet has become mature as a medium, giving about half a billion people access to different versions of events.
However, the coverage itself was intrinsically biased by the fact that Internet penetration in Iraq was already very weak (with an estimate of 12,000 users in Iraq in 2002). Further, the deliberate destruction of Iraqi telecommunication facilities by US forces made internet communication even more difficult. Different versions of truth by people who have equal ignorance of first-hand, raw data are by definition a very biased substitute for original, first-hand reports from people living locally. The World Wide Web did deliver some first-hand reports from bloggers such as Salam Pax. Additional information was available on soldier blogs.
Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based news network, which was formed in 1996, gained a lot of worldwide attention for its coverage of the war. Their broadcasts were popular in much of the Arab world, but also to some degree in western nations, with major American networks such as CNN and MSNBC re-broadcasting some of their coverage. Al-Jazeera was well-known for their graphic footage of civilian casualties, which American news media branded as overly sensationalistic. The English website of Al-Jazeera was brought down during the middle of the Iraq war by internet vandals.In August of 2004, Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi had al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices closed, and temporarily banned the station from broadcasting in Iraq. A couple of weeks later, the ban was made indefinite, and Iraqi security officers raided the station, sealing it off. Al-Jazeera called the raid "reminiscent of the way certain other regimes have behaved."[47] Other journalists have been harrassed by the Allawi regime.
Some individuals have claimed that European coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was not as unbiased as leading European press agencies led their readers and viewers to believe, claiming that people in the US were generally not too terribly surprised by the swift victory of the Coalition over the Iraqi army, and that most people in Europe and the Middle East were "dumbfounded" that despite "a steady stream of negative press coverage on the Coalitions successes", the Iraqi army was defeated in just over three weeks. Military leaders shut off the BBC connection to the HMS Ark Royal after grumbling among sailors that it was biased in favor of Iraqi reports. [48] By contrast, a study by Justin Lewis at Cardiff University found that the BBC reports had been somewhat sanitized, and did not question pro-war assumptions.
It is not clear on what basis the critics claim that the US was not surprised by the swift end to the war, nor on what basis they claim that Europeans were "dumbfounded."
Others point out that it is not the job of media organizations to support the military of their country. In Europe the US press and media are widely seen as unquestioningly pro-government; news programs adopting names like "Operation Iraqi Freedom" uncritically, and reporters wearing US flags in their lapels, are seen as inappropriate behavior. In particular the British broadcast media (but not the press) are required to observe due impartiality.
French journalist Alain Hertoghe published a book accusing the French press in particular and the European press in general of not being objective in its coverage of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Hertoghe's book, La Guerre a Outrances (The War of Outrages), criticizes French press coverage of the war as being pessimistic of the US led Coalition's chance of success and continually focusing on challenges faced during the invasion. Hertoghe also claims in his book that the European media became so wrapped up in its own particular biases against the United States that they fed disinformation to their readers and viewers and misled them as to the unfolding events. His selection of press articles to illustrate his point has been criticised as somewhat selective. The European coverage's concerns about the military becoming bogged down in Iraq and the war ending badly seem to have come true, as late as eighteen months after the declaration of the end of "major hostilities." Since being published, Hertoghe has been fired from his position at French newspaper La Croix . It was claimed that only one major French newspaper had published a review of his book.
International initiatives such as http://amor.cms.hu-berlin.de/~h0444e1w/massmail.htm protested against the U.S. media for downplaying and misinterpreting protests as anti-americanism and accused them of foul language such as calling Chirac "A balding Joan of Arc in drag", the French "frog-eating weasels" (New York Post) or stating that "Chirac and his poodle Putin have severely damaged the United Nations". Questions are also raised about U.S. media coverage given that in the U.S. pre-war polls showed that a majority of the population believed that Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attacks although none of the terrorists was Iraqi and no proofs of an Iraqi connection to the attack are known.
Many protesters did display hostile attitudes toward both the United States and Israel, reflecting the deep division of world opinion on those countries, and many Arab and Mid Eastern showed overt sympathies towards Saddam Hussein, perhaps reflecting their feelings of unity with other Arabs.
Peter Arnett, who had won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1966 for his coverage of the war in Vietnam was fired by MSNBC and National Geographic after he had declared in an interview with the Iraqi information ministry that he believed the U.S. strategy of "shock and awe" had failed. He also went on to tell Iraqi State TV that he had told "Americans about the determination of the Iraqi forces, the determination of the government, and the willingness to fight for their country", and that reports from Baghdad about civilian casualties had helped antiwar protesters undermine the Bush administration's strategy. The interview was given 10 days before the fall of Baghdad, more than 500 US soldiers have since been killed, in addition to over 18,000 medical evacuations for 11,700 patients [49].On April 2, 2003, in a speech given by British Home Secretary David Blunkett while in New York City, Blunkett also commented on what he believed to be sympathetic and corrupt reporting of Iraq by Arab news sources. He told the audience that "It's hard to get the true facts if the reporters of Al Jazeera are actually linked into, and are only there because they are provided with facilities and support from the regime." Ironically, his speech came only hours before Al Jazeera was ejected from Baghdad by the Iraq regime.
Amnesty International Report on Iraq
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