Talk:2003 invasion of Iraq/Other

The 2003 Iraq War, was a

. {{2003 Invasion of Iraq}} The war was a result of Iraqi government ongoing noncompliance with repeated UN resolutions. After approximately three weeks of fighting, Iraq was occupied by coalition forces and the rule of Saddam and his officially refused the use of its territory for such purposes, due in no small part to their opposition to possible Kurdish attempts at independence. Coalition forces also supported Iraqi Kurdish militia troops, estimated to number upwards of 50,000.

Facing them was a large but poorly equipped military force. The regular Iraqi army was estimated at 280,000–350,000 troops, with four

units. The Iraqi Air Force and Navy played a negligible role in the conflict.

On

United States military operations were conducted under the name

Operation Falconer

.

Prelude

Since the end of the

.

The

.

In September 2000, in the Rebuilding America's Defenses (pg. 17) report,

In 2002 the

Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq

" (Adopted 296-133 by the House of Representatives and 77-23 by the Senate), the United States Congress granted President Bush the authority to wage war against Iraq. The Joint Resolution was worded so as to encourage, but not require, UN Security Council approval for military action, although as a matter of international law the US required explicit Security Council approval for an invasion unless an attack by Iraq had been imminent — the US administration argued that there was a "growing" or "gathering", rather than imminent, threat. The joint resolution allowed the President of the United States to, "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq".

In November 2002,

, has expressed an opinion in November, 2003, that the invasion was against international law, but argued that it was justified. There is still much disagreement among international lawyers on whether prior resolutions, relating to the 1991 war and later inspections, permitted the invasion.

The United States also began

military

preparations.

Rationale

See

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

no-fly zones

, which had been implemented after the Gulf War in 1991.

Throughout

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:

• end the Saddam Hussein government
• help Iraq's transition to democratic self-rule
• find and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, weapons programs, and terrorists
• collect intelligence on networks of weapons of mass destruction and terrorists
• end sanctions and to deliver humanitarian support (According to
  Madeline Albright
  , half a million Iraqi children had died because of sanctions.)
• secure Iraq's oil fields and resources

Many staff and supporters within the Bush administration had other, more ambitious goals for the war as well. Many propagated the claim that the war could act as a

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, bureaucratic 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

, 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

• to gain control over Iraq's hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market (since 2000, Iraq had used the Euro as its oil export currency)
• to ensure the US had military control over the region's hydrocarbon reserves as a lever to control other countries that depend on it
• to assure that the revenue from Iraqi oil would go primarily to American interests
• to lower the price of oil for American consumers
• to maintain the wartime popularity that the President enjoyed due to his response to the September 11 attacks (in contrast to his father whose wartime popularity faded when the electorate began to focus on the economy)
• to channel money to defense and construction interests

Weapons of Mass Destruction

See Iraq disarmament crisis for more details.

Security Council

. Absence of more substantial proofs undermined the credibility of the speech on the international scene. Russian experts questioned the likelihood of such mobile facilities, which are extremely dangerous and difficult to manage.

Ultimately, the Iraq war was presented as largely being a case of removing banned weapons from Iraq. Administration officials, especially with the

that 'For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction'.

Before the attack, the head UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Hans Blix, clearly stated that his teams had been unable to find any evidence of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons in Iraq, but that there were issues that had not yet been resolved. Retrospectively, some time after the attack, he doubts they existed [7], [8]. Former top American weapons inspector to Iraq, Scott Ritter, a long time advocate of more thorough weapons inspections previously and considered an anti-Iraq hardliner, said that he was now absolutely convinced Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction [9]. In fact, most of the international community, including the US/UK intelligence community, came to some form of this conclusion or at least were ambivalent. The Bush administration, though, said they had additional, secret intelligence they could not yet make public which proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Iraq had such weapons.

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. [10] 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" [11].

On May 29, 2003, Pres. Bush said during an interview with Polish network TVP that "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." [12]

Also included in the list of postwar justifications is

.

The

. 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 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" [16]. 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. [17].

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 concluded that Iraq 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. Kay also believes that a large but undetermined amount of the former Iraqi government's WMD program had been moved to Syria shortly before the 2003 invasion. [18] However, in April 2005, the Iraq Survey Group's final report "found no senior policy, program, or intelligence officials who admitted any direct knowledge of such movement of WMD," and ruled out any government-sanctioned movement of banned weapons to Syria.[19]

The current situation concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction seems similar to that portrayed by Hussein Kamel in 1995 and that of Imad Khadduri [20], 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,

[22]

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.[23]

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. [24]

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."[25]

On

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

On January 12, 2005, US military forces, having located no weapons of mass destruction, formally abandoned the search.

Links between the government of Iraq and terrorist organizations

See also

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." [30] 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."

Some of the evidence 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 claimed 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.

There are, however, many al Qaeda operatives who have bolstered the current US administration's claims of collaboration between al Qaeda and the now deposed Iraqi government, as well as charges of cooperation made by the Clinton administration. Al Qaeda weapons smuggler Mohamed Mansour Shahab said in an interview in the New Yorker magazine that he had been directed by the Iraqi intelligence community to organize, plan, and carry out up to nine terrorist attacks against American targets in the Middle East, including an attack similar to the one carried out on the USS Cole. [31]. The only member of the original plot to destroy the World Trade Center to escape US law enforcement officials, Abdul Rahman Yasin, fled to Baghdad shortly after the attacks in 1993.

Abbas al-Janabi, who served for fifteen years as personal assistant to Uday Hussein before defecting to Britain, has spoken frequently about his knowledge of collaboration between the former Iraqi government and al Qaeda. Al-Janabi said that he had learnt that Iraqi officials had visited Afghanistan and Sudan to strengthen ties with Al-Qaeda and he also claimed he knew of a facility near Baghdad where foreign fighters were trained and instructed by members of the Republican Guard and Mukhabarat. [32]. A facility matching al-Janabi’s description was captured by US Marines in Mid April of 2003 [33]

Abdul Rahman Yasin was the only member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the 1993 World Trade Center bomb to remain at large after the investigation into the bombing where he fled to Iraq. After major fighting ceased U.S. forces discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, that show that the Iraqi government gave Yasin a house and monthly salary. [34]

It was eventually shown that, while representatives of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda had indeed met, an operational relationship was never realized and there was a deep sense of mistrust and dislike of one another. 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 [35] went so far as to say of Bin Laden "His aims are in ideological conflict with present day Iraq."

In 2004, the

, 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 government did have relationships with other militant organizations in the Middle East including

(attacks in Italy and elsewhere) died in Baghdad from gunshot wounds while facing treason charges under Saddam's government.

Some documents indicate that the leadership was attempting to distance itself from Islamist militants fighters instead of working with them [36], 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 than 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

, which was an enemy of the Ba'athist government. Nevertheless, U.S. officials continued to assert that Zarqawi constitutes an important link between Saddam's government and al Qaeda. A CIA report in early October 2004 "found no clear evidence of Iraq harbouring Abu Musab al-Zarqawi". [37] 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.[38] This pledge came two days after his insurgent organization in Iraq was officially declared a terrorist organization by the .

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[39].

See

for a more detailed account of the invasion.

Prior to invasion, the United States and other coalition forces involved in the

.

Opening attack

At approximately 02:30

UTC

or about 90 minutes after the lapse of the 48-hour deadline, at 05:30 local time, explosions were heard in Baghdad. At 03:15 UTC, or 10:15 pm EST, U.S. President George W. Bush announced that he had ordered the coalition to launch an "attack of opportunity" against targets in Iraq.

Before the invasion, many observers had expected a lengthy campaign of aerial bombing in advance of any ground action, taking as examples the

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 Iraqi command structure and destroy it in a short time, and that this would minimize civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure. It was expected that the elimination of the leadership would lead to the collapse of the army and the government, and that much of the population would support the invaders once the government had been weakened. Occupation of cities and attacks on peripheral military units were viewed as undesirable distractions.

Following Turkey's decision to deny any official 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

, 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--a side effect of these actions were many environmental problems. Presumably, oil infrastructure was secured for financial reasons as well as strategic.

In keeping with the rapid advance plan, the

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 resistance from Iraqi troops and paused for some days for re-supply before continuing toward Baghdad.

U.S. 2nd battalion 5th SFG conducted reconnaissance in the cities of Basra, Karbala, Tikrit, Sargat and various others. In the North 10th SFG had the mission of aiding the Kurdish factions such as the Union of Kurdistan and the Democratic Party of Kurdistan. Turkey had officially forbidden any US troops from using their bases. ODA 081 took part in Operation Viking Hammer or Ugly Baby dubbed by the soldiers, the mission was to destroy Al An-sar Islam and a rogue faction of Kurdish troops, it is said that Al An-sar Islam and the Kurdish faction slipped into Iraq via Iran. The target was Sargat and after heavy fighting with both groups the SF finally took Sargat and pushed the remaining units out of Northern Iraq. SFOD-D, SAS, SASR, Navy SEALs and Combat Controllers played vital roles--their missions however were never documented in any way. Army Rangers parachuted into H3 an Iraqi Airfield, and secured it for future use. Iraq was the largest deployment of Special Forces since Vietnam. 10% of all soldiers were Special Forces.

Fall of Baghdad (April 2003)

Three weeks into the invasion, U.S. forces

.

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 government. These individuals were identified by a variety of means, most famously through sets of most-wanted Iraqi playing cards.

.

Other areas

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. In one case two armored platoons were used to convince Iraqi leadership that an entire armored battalion was entrenched in the west of Iraq.

On April 15, U.S. forces mostly took control of Tikrit, the last major outpost in central Iraq.

Security, Looting and War Damage

Looting took place in the days following. It was reported that the

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.

File:Saddamstatue.jpg

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 pre-meditated systematic removal of key artifacts.

The

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." [40]

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.

"End of major combat operations" (May 2003)

On May 1, 2003 George W. Bush landed on the aircraft carrier

) and placed there by the U.S. Navy, was criticized as premature - especially later as the guerrilla war dragged on. The White House subsequently released a statement alleging that the sign and Bush's visit referred to the initial invasion of Iraq and disputed the claim of theatrics.

"Major combat" concluding did not mean that peace had returned to Iraq. Iraq was subsequently marked by violent conflict between

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

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

Arabian Nights

.

After the war, information began to emerge about several

Roadmap For Peace

, and the abdication of Saddam Hussein to be replaced under UN elections.

Opinion and legality

See

Support and opposition for the 2003 invasion of Iraq

for the full article.

U.S. President Bush

Global Protests

around the World against the Iraq War

Countries supporting and opposing the war

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 (184). Ten other countries 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. For example, in Spain polls reported at one time a 90% opposition to the war.

volunteered any assistance to the Iraqi side.

Saudi Foreign Minister

Legality of the invasion

UK

would go to war.

Some believed that the US and other coalition governments breached international law. Under Article 2, Number 4 of the UN Charter, "All Members shall refrain... from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state..." This is known as the "Prohibition of Aggression". For the use of force other than in self defence, it is absolute without the positive sanction of the security council under Article 42. Resolution 1441 was not intended by China, Russia and France to authorise war. The coalition formed around the USA argued that another understanding of the resolution is possible, although Kofi Annan, speaking on behalf of the UN charter, declared: "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal." [49]

The Bush administration argued that the UN Security Council Resolutions authorizing the

.

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

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 claimed it was a legal action which they were within international law to undertake. Along with

Oil for Food program

and the UN in general, and a resentment of the cultural and economic dominance of the USA that led to opposition irrespective of the merits of the invasion. There is still on-going discussion in the UK whether the war was actually legal, and the final verdict has yet to be reached.

Popular view of the invasion

Some 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, [51], 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, declarations by some 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" [52] has been focused upon by those who question 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 to have tried to procure materials and equipment for their manufacture, these weapons and material have yet to be discovered. In January 2005, the US announced that the search for these weapons was over. This casts doubt on some of the accusations against Iraq. 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. [53] [54]

See

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

as well as the period covered in this article.

Iraqis	Counts of civilian deaths specifically documented range from 17,384 to 19,770 1. A study in the Lancet estimated 100,000 deaths2 from all causes, with roughly three times as many injured. This has been disputed 3.	[55][56] (Lancet report [pdf]) [57] [58]
U.S. armed forces	1,563 deaths, 12,202 combat wounded (6,052 serious) + unknown non-combat injuries	[59][60][61]
Armed forces of other coalition countries	177	[62]
Non-Iraqi civilians	from 221 to 355	[63] source

¹ These only refer to deaths reported by two or more news organizations, and include "all deaths which the Occupying Authority has a binding responsibility to prevent under the Geneva Conventions and Hague Regulations. This includes civilian deaths resulting from the breakdown in law and order, and deaths due to inadequate health care or sanitation."

² The study's estimate of total deaths ranges from 8,000 to 194,000 at a 95% confidence interval.

³ For instance a written Ministerial Statement (17 November 2004) by the UK government [64]

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 United States. Also notable was the usage "

)

Terminology introduced or popularized during the war include:

• "
  Shock and Awe
  ", the strategy of reducing an enemy's will to fight through displays of overwhelming force.
• "Embedding", United States practice of assigning civilian journalists to U.S. military units; see war correspondent.
• "Coalition of the willing"—Term originated in the Clinton era (eg: interview, President Clinton, ABC, June 8, 1994), and used by the Bush Administration to describe the countries contributing troops in the invasion, of which the US and UK are primaries.
• "Old Europe"—Rumsfeld's term used to describe the divisions between European governments: "You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe."
• "Public diplomacy", euphemism for propaganda.
• "Regime change", euphemism for overthrowing a government.
• "Decapitating the regime", euphemism for either overthrowing the government or killing Saddam Hussein.
• "minder", Iraqi government official assigned to watch over a foreign correspondent

Many slogans and terms coined have come to be used against the

.

Main article:

2003 invasion of Iraq media coverage

Media coverage of this war was different in certain ways from that of the

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".

The European coverage was critical of the invasion, putting a greater emphasis on coalition setbacks and losses and civilian casualties than the US media [67] [68].

Arab media coverage of the conflict was criticized as biased towards Iraq. For example, the Chicago Tribune on April 10, 2003 reported that the defeat sent a shockwave of incredulity across the Middle East, and quoted a Damascus housewife who believed that jubilant Iraqis were being paid to act that way in front of the cameras [69].

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

.

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."[70]

Military leaders shut off the BBC connection to HMS Ark Royal after grumbling among sailors that it was biased in favor of Iraqi reports. [71] 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.

Others point out that it is not the job of media organizations to support the military of their country. In Europe the

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 à 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.

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 [72].

On April 2, 2003, in a speech given by

, 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 régime". Ironically, his speech came only hours before Al Jazeera was ejected from Baghdad by the Iraqi government.

U.S. media coverage of other wars has included photographs of the flag-draped coffins of American military personnel killed in action. In the invasion and occupation of Iraq, however, the Bush administration prohibited such photographs, and, according to

However, the eventual release of Dover photographs in response to a Freedom of Information request filed by some bloggers proved that Senator Leahy was not telling the truth.

See also

• Post-invasion Iraq, 2003-2005
• Iraqi insurgency
• Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003
• Military preparations for 2003 invasion of Iraq
• List of people associated with the 2003 invasion of Iraq
• 2003 - 2004 occupation of Iraq timeline
• Human rights in post-Saddam Iraq
• Iraq disarmament crisis
• Australian contribution to the 2003 invasion of Iraq
• Polish contribution to the 2003 invasion of Iraq
• The UN Security Council and the Iraq war
• Governments' pre-war positions on invasion of Iraq
• Popular opposition to war on Iraq
• Global protests against war on Iraq
• American popular opinion of invasion of Iraq
• American government position on invasion of Iraq
• Predicted effects of invading Iraq
• Reconstruction of Iraq

• Donnelly, Thomas. Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century. Report of the Project for the New American Century, September 2000. Available online.

• "Frequently Asked Questions about the Iraq War"
• Amnesty International Report on Iraq
• Iraq: Tribunal established without consultation
• Iraq: Amnesty International seeks clarification on house demolitions by US troops in Iraq
• Reconstruction must ensure the human rights of Iraqis
• Memorandum on concerns related to legislation introduced by the Coalition Provisional Authority
• Iraq: Forcible return of refugees and asylum-seekers is contrary to international law
• War in Iraq: Day by Day Guide

bg:Война в Ирак (2003) cy:Rhyfel Irac Dau da:Golfkrigen 2003 de:Dritter Golfkrieg es:Invasión de Iraq de 2003 fr:Guerre en Irak (2003-2004) he:מלחמת עיראק nl:Golfoorlog (2003) no:Invasjonen av Irak ja:イラク戦争 nds:Situatschoon in'n Irak ro:Invazia Irakului din 2003 fi: Irakin sota sv:Irakkriget zh:美伊战争