Weapons of Mass Destruction

Ultimately, the Iraq 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 28 May 2003 in Vanity Fair 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 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

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.

President Bush and members of his cabinet and staff relied heavily on intelligence reports of which the C.I.A.'s 2002 report) on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was one of the more prominent.

Legality of the invasion
U.S. Law
Under the United States Constitution, Presidents do not have authority to declare war. This power is granted exclusively to Congress, and there is no provision in the Constitution for its delegation. As the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, it cannot be superseded except by amendment to itself. On October 3, 2002, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) submitted to the House International Relations committee a proposed declaration which read, "A state of war is declared to exist between the United States and the government of Iraq." It was rejected. Citing several factors, including unresolved issues from the 1991 Gulf War, the Bush administration claimed intrinsic authority to engage Iraq militarily, and Congress delegated its war powers to the President.

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. 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 Biological Warfare (BW) laims as a "worst case analysis"

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

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 Clintonadministration 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 reported in the 'Interim Progress Report' on 2003 October 3 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), twelve-year-old documents and small parts concerning uranium enrichment kept found in a scientist's home

partially declared UAVs, capability to produce a type of fuel useful for Scudmissiles, a scientist who had drawn plans for how to make longer-range missiles, and attempts to acquire missile technology from North Korea, and destroyed documents of unknown significance.

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" . He has also directly contradicted since then much of the October report. David Kay is a Republican who donated money to both the RN and the campaign of president George W. Bush. Before David Kay came out about this, many of his scientists had already done so. 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. 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.

The current situation concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction seems similar to that portrayed by Hussein Kamel in 1995 and that of Imad Khadduri, 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. Athough the use of chemical weapons against Kurds in 1983 was known by US intelligence, Donald Rumsfeld, at the time presidential envoy of Ronald Reagan, nevertheless spoke of "his close relationship" with Saddam Hussein and even visited him. After the Persian Gulf Wr the US government encouraged rebellions by the Shiites but did not intervene when Saddam crushed the rebels.

As of May 2005, small quantities of chemically degraded mustard gas had been found in old munitions. However, these are generally regarded as left-overs from the pre-sanction era before the 1991 Gulf War, and in November 2005 David Kay, the head of the Iraq Suvery Group charged with finding Saddam Hussein's WMDs stated that there probably were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq prior to the invasion and that the likelihood of any WMDs having been sent to neighboring nations like Syria was so small that it was not a viable explanation for what happened to the weapons. The general consesus is that the intelligence community, including the CIA and other foreign services, failed to provide an accurate picture of the WMD program in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. The U.S. government and the Bush administration have not yet taken official stances on the intelligence failures, but Congressional investigations, primarily under Democratic leadership, were either underway or forming in the spring of 2005.

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.

The United Nations announced a report on March 2, 2004from the weapons inspection teams stating that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction of any significance after 1994.

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."

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 necessary, 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."

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

Sanctions:
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 and UN officials involved in the program 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 may have reached the limit of their usefulness

International Law

Resolution 1441, drafted and accepted unanimously the year before the invasion, threatened "serious consequences" to Iraq in case Iraq did not comply with all conditions. Russia, People's Republic of China, and France made clear in a joint statement that this did not authorize the use of force but a further resolution was needed. This was also the position of the UK and the US at the time the resolution was decided. On the day of the vote the US ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, said a 2nd UN resolution was required to authorise war. Until a few days before the war, it was the position of the UK, the main US ally in the war, that a further resolution would be desirable before the UK would go to war.

Some have said that the US and other coalition governments' invasion of Iraq was an unprovoked assault on an independent country which 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."

The Bush administration argued 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 face war for failing to meet the conditions of the cease-fire. 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). For instance, in WWII, the state of war with Germany did not end until 19 October1951) and with Japan, not until 28 April 1952

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 has a veto in 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 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, governments 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 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.

On 28 April 2005, the UK government published the full advice given by the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith on 7 March 2003 on the legality of the war. The publication of this document followed the leaking of the summary to the press the day before. In a Labour press conference, Tony Blair responded to a question from journalist Jon Snow asking whether the full report could be published by saying 'we may as well, you've seen most of it already'. In the document, Lord Goldsmith weighs up the different arguments on whether military action against Iraq would be legal without a 2nd UN Resolution. It was clear about one point, "Regime change," insisted the Attorney General, "cannot be the object of military action." Any invasion which had that goal would be unambiguously illegal under international law

Fall of Baghdad (April 2003)

Three weeks into the invasion, U.S. forces moved into Baghdad. Initial plans were for armor units to surround the city and a street-to-street battle to commence using Airborne units. However, within days a "Thunder Run" of US tanks was launched to test Iraqi defenses, with about 30 tanks rushing from a staging base to the Baghdad airport. They met heavy resistance, including many suicide attacks, but launched another run two days later into the Palaces of Saddam Hussein, where they established a base. Within hours of the palace seizure, and television coverage of this spreading through Iraq, Iraqi resistance crumbled around the city. Iraqi government officials had either disappeared or had conceded defeat. On April 9, 2003, Baghdad was formally secured by US forces and the power of Saddam Hussein was declared ended. Saddam had vanished, and his whereabouts were unknown. Many Iraqis celebrated the downfall of Saddam by vandalizing the many portraits and statues of him together with 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 a crowd of Iraqis apparently cheered the soldiers on. The spontaneity of this event has been 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 government. These individuals were identified by a variety of means, most famously through sets of most-wanted Iraqi playing cards

On 22 July 2003 during a raid by the U.S. 101st Airborne Division and men from Task Force 20, Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay, and one of his grandsons were killed.

Saddam Hussein was captured on December 13, 2003 by the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division and members of Task Force 121 during Operation Red Dawn.

Summary of the invasion

Coalition forces managed to topple the government and capture the key cities of a large nation in only 28 days, taking minimal losses while also trying to avoid large civilian deaths and even high numbers of dead Iraqi military forces. The invasion was, in a military context, a complete success, and did not require the huge army built up for the 1991 Gulf War, which numbered half a million Allied troops. This did prove short-sighted, however, due to requirement for a much larger force to combat the irregular Iraqi forces in the aftermath of the war.

The Saddam-built army had no weapons that could stand up to Coalition forces, and managed only to stage a few ambushes that gained a great deal of media attention but in reality did nothing to slow the Coalition advance. The Iraqi T-72U.S. Air ForceRoyal Air Force operated with impunity throughout the country, pinpointing heavily defended enemy targets and destroying them before ground troops arrived. tanks, the heaviest armored vehicles in the Iraqi Army, were both outdated and ill-maintained, and when they did stand up to Coalition forces were destroyed quickly, thanks in part due to the Coalition's control of the air. The and British

The main battle tanks (MBT) of the Coalition forces, the U.S. M1 Abrams and British Challenger 2, proved their worth in the rapid advance across the country. Even with the large number of RPG attacks by irregular Iraqi forces, few Coalition tanks were lost and no tank crewmen was killed by hostile fire. All three British tank crew fatalities were a result of friendly fire. The only tank loss sustained by the British Army was a Challenger 2 of the Queen's Royal Lancers that was hit by another Challenger 2, killing two crewmen.

The Iraqi Army suffered from poor morale, even amongst the supposedly elite Republican Guard, and entire units simply melted away into the crowds upon the approach of Coalition troops. Other Iraqi Army officers were bribed by the CIA or coecered into surrendering to coalition forces. Worse, the Iraqi Army had incompetent leadership - reports state that Qusay Hussein, charged with the defense of Baghdad, dramatically shifted the positions of the two main divisions protecting Baghdad several times in the days before the arrival of U.S. forces, and as a result the units within were both confused and further demoralized when the U.S. Army attacked. By no means did the Coalition invasion force see the entire Iraqi military thrown against it, and it is assumed that most units disintegrated to either join the growing Iraqi insurgency or return to their homes.

End of major combat operations" (May 2003)

On 1 May 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. Bush's landing was criticized by opponents as an overly theatrical and expensive stunt. The official reasoning behind using a jet for the landing was the distance of the carrier from the shore. It has since been revealed the carrier was well within helicopter range of San Diego, and was turned around to hide the coast line from the TV cameras. Clearly visible in the background was a banner stating "Mission Accomplished". The banner, made by White House personnel (according to a CNN story
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. The Bush Administration pointed out that they felt there was some merit to these claims, espeically when one reads the content of President Bush's speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, where he notes several times that this was not the end of actions in Iraq OR The War on Terrorism.

"Major combat" concluding did not mean that peace had returned to Iraq. Iraq was subsequently marked by violent conflict between U.S.-led occupation of Iraqinsurgents. As of May 11, 2005, the total deaths of American soldiers as a direct result of the Iraq invasion, reached over 1600, a large percentage of which were young men between the ages of 18 and 22. Of these, over 1318 were killed or died in accidents after the "end of major hostilities" was announced by president Bush on 1 May 2003. Some critics of the invasion (such as former CIA analyst Bill Christison (writing in Counterpunch)) argue that there are parallels between the current situation in Iraq and the Vietnam War[61] or film-maker George Lucas . Many supporters of the invasion disagree, for example U.S. Senator John McCain, a Vietnam veteran, who said in a speech given to the U.S. Senate on April 7, 2004: "I know we do not face another Vietnam". soldiers and forces described by the occupiers as (

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

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. [6sea Baba, after a character in the Arabian Nights . The insurgents are generally known to the Coalition forces as

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.

Post-invasion Iraq, 2003-2005

The post-invasion period in Iraq followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a multinational coalition led by the United States, which overthrew the Ba'ath Party government of Saddam Hussein. This article covers the period starting 1 May 2003.

A military occupation was established and run by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which later appointed and granted limited powers to an Iraq Interim Governing Council. Troops for the occupation came primarily from the United States and the United Kingdom, but Spain, Australia, ItalyPoland provided some troops, and there were varying levels of assistance from Japan and other allied countries. Tens of thousands of private security personnel supplemented the military forces. Coalition and allied Iraqi forces have been fighting a stronger-than-expected militant Iraqi insurgency, and the reconstruction of Iraq has been slow. Both the insurgency and the slow rate of progress have been critically attributed to poor planning and substantial mistakes in judgement and diplomacy made both during and after the invasion. and

The CPA and the Governing Council were disbanded on June 28, 2004, and a new transitional constitution came into effect.
Limited sovereignty was transferred to a Governing Council Iraqi interim government led by Iyad Allawi as Iraq's first post-Saddam prime minister. The Iraqi Interim Government was replaced as a result of the elections which took place in January 2005.