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Between September, 2002 and June, 2003, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz created a Pentagon unit known as the Office of Special Plans (OSP), headed by Douglas Feith. It was created to supply senior Bush administration officials with raw intelligence pertaining to Iraq, unvetted by intelligence analysts, and circumventing traditional intelligence gathering operations by the CIA. One former CIA officer described the OSP as dangerous for U.S. national security and a threat to world peace, and that it lied and manipulated intelligence to further its agenda of removing Saddam Hussein. He described it as a group of ideologues with pre-determined notions of truth and reality, taking bits of intelligence to support their agenda and ignoring anything contrary. Subsequently, in 2008, the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity has enumerated a total of 935 false statements made by George Bush and six other top members of his administration in a carefully launched campaign of misinformation during the two year period following 9-11, in order to rally support for the invasion of Iraq
.Colin Powell holding a model vial of anthrax while
giving a presentation to the United Nations Security
Council. In October, 2002, a few days before the U.S.
Senate voted on the Joint Resolution to Authorize the
Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, about 75
senators were told in closed session that Saddam Hussein
had the means of attacking the eastern seaboard of the
U.S. with biological or chemical weapons delivered by
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). On February 5, 2003,
Colin Powell presented further evidence in his Iraqi WMD
program presentation to the UN Security Council that
UAVs were ready to be launched against the U.S. At the
time, there was a vigorous dispute within the
intelligence community as to whether CIA conclusions
about Iraqi UAVs were accurate. The U.S. Air Force
agency most familiar with UAVs, the State Department's
Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and the Defense
Intelligence Agency denied that Iraq possessed any
offensive UAV capability, saying the few they had were
designed and intended for surveillance. A majority of
the U.S. intelligence committee agreed that the Iraqi
UAVs were used only for reconnaissance. In fact,
Iraq's UAV fleet was never deployed and consisted of a
handful of outdated 24.5-foot (7.5 m) wingspan drones
with no room for more than a camera and video recorder,
and no offensive capability. Despite this controversy,
the Senate voted to approve the Joint Resolution on 11
October 2002 providing the Bush Administration with the
legal basis for the U.S. invasion.
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix remarked in
January 2003 that "Iraq appears not to have come to a
genuine acceptance – not even today – of the
disarmament, which was demanded of it and which it needs
to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to
live in peace." Among other things he noted that 1,000
tons of chemical agent were unaccounted for, information
on Iraq's VX nerve agent program was missing, and that
"no convincing evidence" was presented for the
destruction of 8,500 liters of anthrax that had been
declared. Secretary of State Collin Powell's
presentation to the U.N. on February 3, 2003 was
designed to influence U.N. members that Saddam had
weapons of mass destruction. After his presentation 71%
of those who watched his presentation thought his case
was persuasive, while 56% believed he had presented
enough hard evidence to prove Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction. France even believed that Saddam had
stockpiles of anthrax and botulism toxin, and the
ability to produce VX.[95] But in March, Blix said no
evidence of WMDs had been found, and progress had been
made in inspections.
In early 2003, the U.S., U.K., and Spain proposed the so-called "eighteenth resolution" to give Iraq a deadline for compliance with previous resolutions enforced by the threat of military action. This proposed resolution was subsequently withdrawn due to lack of support on the U.N. Security Council. In particular, NATO members France and Germany, together with Russia, were opposed to military intervention in Iraq due to the high level of risk to the international community's security and defended disarmament through diplomacy
.On January 20, 2003, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin declared. "we believe that military intervention would be the worst solution". Meanwhile anti-war groups across the world organized public protests. According to French academic Dominique Reynié between the 3rd of January and 12th of April 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against war in Iraq, the demonstrations on February 15, 2003 being the largest and most prolific. In February, 2003, the U.S. Army's top general, Eric Shinseki, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that it would take "several hundred thousand soldiers" to secure Iraq. Two days later, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the post-war troop commitment would be less than the number of troops required to win the war and, "the idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces is far from the mark." Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Shineski's estimate was "way off the mark," because other countries would take part in an occupying force. In March 2003, Hans Blix reported that, "No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found," in Iraq, saying that progress was made in inspections which would continue. But the U.S. government announced that "diplomacy has failed" and that it would proceed with a coalition of allied countries, named the "coalition of the willing", to rid Iraq of its alleged weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. government abruptly advised U.N. weapons inspectors to immediately pull out of Baghdad. There were also serious legal questions surrounding the launching of the war against Iraq and the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war. On September 16, 2004 Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations, said of the invasion, "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the U.N. charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal.
At 9:34 PM EST (5:34 AM Baghdad time) on March 19, 2003
the Iraq Invasion began.[103] The 2003 invasion of Iraq,
led by General Tommy Franks, began under the U.S.
codename "Operation Iraqi Freedom", the U.K. codename
Operation Telic, and the Australian codename Operation
Falconer. Coalition forces also cooperated with Kurdish
peshmerga forces in the north. Approximately forty other
nations, the "coalition of the willing," participated by
providing equipment, services, security, and special
forces. The initial coalition military forces were
roughly 300,000, of which 98% were U.S. and U.K. troops.
Map of major operations and battles of the Iraq War as
of 2007. The invasion consisted of eight military
objectives. Each one follows from key points laid out in
President Bush’s National Security Strategy. The
objectives were to end Saddam Hussein’s regime,
identify, isolate and eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction, search, capture and drive out terrorists,
obtain intelligence related to terrorist networks,
accumulate intelligence that is related to the illicit
network of weapons of mass destruction, end sanctions
and distribute humanitarian aid to those in need, secure
Iraq’s oil fields and other resources, and to assist the
Iraqi people in transitioning to a representative
government. Operation Iraqi Freedom was the largest
special operations force since Vietnam. It was a quick
and decisive operation encountering little resistance.
The Iraqi Army was quickly overwhelmed with only the
elite Fedayeen Saddam putting up strong resistance
before melting away into the civilian population. On
April 9 Baghdad fell, ending Saddam's 24-year rule. U.S.
forces seized the deserted Baath Party ministries and
helped tear down a huge iron statue of Saddam, photos
and video of which became symbolic of the event. The
abrupt fall of Baghdad was accompanied by massive civil
disorder, including the looting of government buildings
and drastically increased crime. The invasion phase
concluded when Tikrit, Saddam's home town, fell with
little resistance to the Marines of Task Force Tripoli
and on April 15 the coalition declared the invasion
effectively over.
In the invasion phase of the war (March 20-April 30),
9,200 Iraqi combatants were killed along with 7,299
civilians, primarily by U.S. air and ground forces.
Coalition forces reported the death in combat of 139
U.S. military personnel and 33 UK military personnel.
Coalition Provisional Authority and Iraq Survey Group
See also: Iraqi Governing Council, International
Advisory and Monitoring Board, CPA Program Review Board,
Development Fund for Iraq, and Reconstruction of Iraq
Shortly after the invasion, the multinational coalition
created the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) ????,
based in the Green Zone, as a transitional government of
Iraq until the establishment of a democratic government.
Citing United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483
(22 May 2003) and the laws of war, the CPA vested itself
with executive, legislative, and judicial authority over
the Iraqi government from the period of the CPA's
inception on April 21, 2003, until its dissolution on
June 28, 2004.
The CPA was originally headed by Jay Garner, a former
U.S. military officer, but his appointment lasted only
until May 11, 2003. After Garner resigned, President
Bush appointed L. Paul Bremer as the head the CPA and he
served until the CPA's dissolution in July 2004. Another
group created in the spring of 2003 was the Iraq Survey
Group (ISG; its final report is commonly called the
Duelfer Report.). This was a fact-finding mission sent
by the multinational force in Iraq after the 2003
Invasion of Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) programs developed by Iraq. It consisted of a
1,400-member international team organized by the
Pentagon and CIA to hunt for suspected stockpiles of
WMD, such as chemical and biological agents, and any
supporting research programmes and infrastructure that
could be used to develop WMD. In 2004 the ISG's Duelfer
report stated that Iraq did not have a viable WMD
program.
The USS Abraham Lincoln returning to port carrying its
Mission Accomplished banner Further information: U.S.
list of most-wanted Iraqis and Terrorist attacks of the
Iraq War
On May 1, 2003, President Bush staged a dramatic visit
to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln operating a
few miles west of San Diego, California on its way home
from a long deployment which had included service in the
Persian Gulf. The visit climaxed at sunset with Bush's
now well-known "Mission Accomplished" speech. In this
nationally-televised speech, delivered before the
sailors and airmen on the flight deck, Bush effectively
declared victory due to the defeat of Iraq's
conventional forces. However, Saddam Hussein remained at
large and significant pockets of resistance remained.
After President Bush's speech, coalition forces noticed
a gradually increasing flurry of attacks on its troops
in various regions, especially in the "Sunni
Triangle". In the initial chaos after the fall of the
Iraqi government, there was massive looting of
infrastructure, including government buildings, official
residences, museums, banks, and military depots.
According to The Pentagon, 250,000 tons (of 650,000 tons
total) of ordnance was looted, providing a significant
source of ammunition for the Iraqi insurgency. The
insurgents were further helped by hundreds of weapons
caches created prior to the invasion by the conventional
Iraqi army and Republican Guard. source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War
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