Iraq War

This article is about the war beginning in 2003. For other uses, see Iraq war (disambiguation).

Iraq War
File:Iraq streetfight.jpg Casualties (clockwise from top left): April 2003. November 2004. March 2007. March 2007.
Date March 20, 2003 – present Location Iraq Result Occupation Overthrow of Baath Party government and execution of Saddam Hussein. Humanitarian crisis in Iraq. Emergence of Iraqi insurgency and outbreak of civil war in Iraq. Substantial civilian casualties and widespread infrastructure damage Privatisation of Iraqi services Human rights abuses in Iraq Election of a new government Al-Qaeda terror operations in Iraq. Iraqi diaspora
Belligerents
Baathist Iraq Post-Baathist government, multi-sided conflict: Baath Party Loyalists Mahdi Army al-Qaeda in Iraq Other Insurgent groups	New Iraqi Army Kurdish Army Coalition: United States United Kingdom Australia Poland Other Coalition forces
Commanders and leaders
Saddam Hussein (POW) Muqtada al-Sadr Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (KIA) Abu Ayyub al-Masri	Nouri al-Maliki Massoud Barzani George W. Bush Tommy Franks Ricardo Sanchez George Casey David Petraeus Tony Blair Gordon Brown Brian Burridge
Strength
Iraqi (under Saddam Hussein): 375,000+ regular forces. Post-Baathist government, multi-sided conflict: Sunni Insurgents 60,000 Mahdi Army ~60,000 al Qaeda/others 1,300+	Coalition ~300,000 invasion ~168,000 current Contractors* ~182,000 (118,000 Iraqi, 43,000 Other, 21,000 US) Kurdish Army 50,000 invasion 175,000 current New Iraqi Army 165,000 Iraqi Police 227,000
Casualties and losses
Iraqi combatant dead (during invasion period before Baathist government fell): 7,600 to 10,800 Insurgents dead (After Saddam Hussein's Baathist government fell): 11,893-13,108+ listed on a representative list of reports Detainees: 22,500	Iraqi Security Forces (After Saddam. Allied with Coalition): 5,700+ killed (police) 3,200+ killed (military) Total killed: 8,600+ Coalition dead (3,706 US, 168 UK, 129 other): 4,003 Coalition missing or captured (US): 4 Coalition wounded (26,558 US, ~350 UK, 324 other): 27,232 Coalition injured** (27,689 US, 2,436 UK): 30,125 Contractors dead (US 231): 1,002 Contractors missing or captured (US 9): 17 Contractors wounded & injured: ~13,000
***Total deaths (all excess deaths) Johns Hopkins - As of June 2006: 654,965 (range of 392,979–942,636). 601,027 were violent deaths (31% attributed to Coalition, 24% to others, 46% unknown) War-related & criminal violence deaths (all Iraqis) Iraq Health Minister. Through early November 2006: 100,000-150,000 War-related & criminal violence deaths (civilians) Iraq Body Count - English language media only: 69,045-75,495
*Contractors (U.S. government) perform "often highly dangerous duties almost identical to those performed by many U.S. troops." **"injured" refers to those casualties reported as injured, diseased, or requiring medical air transport. ***Total deaths include all additional deaths due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poorer healthcare, etc. For explanations of the wide variation in casualty estimates, see: Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003

The Iraq War, otherwise called the Occupation of Iraq, the Second or Third Gulf War or in the U.S., Operation Iraqi Freedom, is an ongoing conflict which began on March 20, 2003 with the United States-led invasion of Iraq.

The main rationale for the Iraq War offered by U.S. President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and their domestic and foreign supporters was that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction. These weapons, it was argued, posed a threat to the United States, its allies and interests. In the 2003 State of the Union Address, Bush claimed that the U.S. could not wait until the threat from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein became imminent. After the invasion, however, no evidence was found of such weapons. To support the war, some U.S. officials cited claims of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. No substantial evidence of any such connection has been found.

The war began on March 20, 2003, when a largely British and American force supported by small contingents from Australia, Denmark and Poland invaded Iraq. The invasion soon led to the defeat and flight of Saddam Hussein. The U.S.-led coalition occupied Iraq and attempted to establish a new democratic government; however it failed to restore order in Iraq. The unrest led to asymmetric warfare with the Iraqi insurgency, civil war between many Sunni and Shia Iraqis and al-Qaeda operations in Iraq. As a result of this failure to restore order, a growing number of coalition nations have withdrawn troops from Iraq. The causes and consequences of the war remain extremely controversial.

1991-2003: U.N. Inspectors and the no-fly zones

See also: Operation Northern Watch and Oil-for-Food Programme

Following the 1991 Gulf War, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 mandated that Iraqi chemical, biological, nuclear, and long range missile programs be halted and all such weapons destroyed under a United Nations Special Commission control. U.N. weapons inspectors inside Iraq were able to verify the destruction of a large amount of WMD-material, but substantial issues remained unresolved after they left Iraq in 1998 due to the lack of cooperation by the Iraqi government.

In addition to the inspection regimen, the United States and the United Kingdom (along with France until 1998) had been engaged in a low-level conflict with Iraq, by enforcing northern and southern Iraqi no-fly zones. These zones were created following the Persian Gulf War to protect the Iraqi Kurdistan in the north and the southern Shia areas. Iraqi air-defense installations and American and British air patrols constantly exchanged fire during this period.

Approximately nine months after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States initiated Operation Southern Focus as a change to its response strategy, by increasing the overall number of missions and selecting targets throughout the no-fly zones in order to disrupt the military command structure in Iraq. The weight of bombs dropped increased from none in March 2002 and 0.3 in April 2002 to between 8 and 14 tons per month in May-August, reaching a pre-war peak of 54.6 tons in September 2002.

2001-2003: Iraq disarmament crisis and prewar intelligence

See also: American government position on invasion of Iraq, Rationale for the Iraq War, Public relations preparations for 2003 invasion of Iraq, Governments' pre-war positions on invasion of Iraq, and Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda

Main articles: Iraq disarmament crisis timeline 2001-2003 and 2002 in Iraq

The Bush administration’s original justification for the Iraq War was that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and later that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was collaborating with the Al-Qaeda terrorist group. However, the intelligence on which both these claims were made has been subject to criticism and to some extent discredited post-invasion, and the administration has also been accused of falsely representing the available intelligence to the public. This has led many war opponents to consider the Iraq War as based on lies.

The issue of Iraq's disarmament reached a crisis in 2002-2003, when President of the United States George W. Bush demanded a complete end to alleged Iraqi production and use of weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq comply with UN Resolutions requiring UN inspectors unfettered access to areas those inspectors thought might have weapons production facilities. Iraq had been banned by the United Nations from developing or possessing such weapons since the 1991 Gulf War. It was also required to permit inspections to confirm Iraqi compliance. Bush repeatedly backed demands for unfettered inspection and disarmament with threats of invasion. In accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1284 (enacted 17 December 1999), Iraq reluctantly agreed to new inspections in late 2002. The inspectors didn't find any WMD stockpiles, but they did not view Iraqi declarations as credible either.

In the initial stages of the war on terror, the Central Intelligence Agency, under George Tenet, was rising to prominence as the lead agency in the Afghanistan war. But when Tenet insisted in his personal meetings with President Bush that there was no connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, V.P. Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld initiated a secret program to re-examine the evidence and marginalize the CIA and Tenet. The questionable intelligence acquired by this secret program was "stovepiped" to the vice president and presented to the public. In some cases, Cheney’s office would leak the intelligence to reporters, where it would be reported by outlets such as The New York Times. Cheney would subsequently appear on the Sunday political television talk shows to discuss the intelligence, referencing The New York Times as the source to give it credence.

File:Joseph Wilson.jpg

Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson

In late February 2002, the CIA sent former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to investigate claims based on forged documents that Iraq has attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium from Africa. He returned home and informed the CIA that the reports of yellowcake sales to Iraq were "unequivocally wrong." After the Bush administration repeatedly referenced the yellowcake claims as justification for war with Iraq, ambassador Wilson wrote a critical op-ed in The New York Times in which he explained the nature of the documents and the government's prior knowledge of their unreliability for use in a case for war. Shortly after Wilson's op-ed, the identity of Wilson's wife, undercover CIA analyst Valerie Plame, was revealed in a column by Robert Novak, in apparent retribution for Wilson going public with doubts about the yellowcake claims. It is a felony to reveal the identity of a CIA agent, yet no one has been convicted as a result of Novak’s column, though I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, was convicted of perjury in the Plame leak investigation.

A British government memo was published in The Sunday Times on May 1, 2005. Known as the "Downing Street memo," it contains an overview of a secret July 23, 2002 meeting among United Kingdom Labour government, defense and intelligence figures, discussing the build-up to the Iraq war—including direct reference to classified U.S. policy of the time. The memo states, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

In September 2002, the Bush administration said attempts by Iraq to acquire thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes pointed to a clandestine program to make enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. Indeed, Colin Powell, in his address to the U.N. Security Council just prior to the war, made reference to the aluminum tubes. But a report released by the Institute for Science and International Security in 2002 reported that it was highly unlikely that the tubes could be used to enrich uranium. Powell later admitted he had presented an inaccurate case to the United Nations on Iraqi weapons, and the intelligence he was relying on was, in some cases, "deliberately misleading."

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.

In late 2002, CIA director George Tenet and Secretary of State Colin Powell both cited the alleged attempted yellowcake purchase by Saddam Hussein from Niger in their September testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In his January, 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush repeated the allegation, citing British intelligence sources. Yellowcake is a product of an intermediary stage in the production of enriched uranium for use in WMD. The yellowcake intelligence was based on falsified classified documents initially revealed by Italian intelligence, and there is evidence the Bush administration was aware in 2002 that the intelligence was not reliable. The Bush administration later admitted that Bush should have jettisoned the claim from his State of the Union speech.

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 vote 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 delivering biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drones that could be launched from ships off the Atlantic coast to attack U.S. eastern seaboard cities. Colin Powell suggested in his presentation to the United Nations Security Council that UAVs were transported out of Iraq and could be launched against the U.S. In fact, Iraq had no offensive fleet of UAVs nor any capability of putting UAVs on ships. Iraq's UAV fleet consisted of less than a handful of outdated Czech training drones. 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 denied outright that Iraq possessed any offensive UAV capability. The Senate voted to approve the Joint Resolution on 11 October 2002 which was used by the Bush Administration as the legal basis for the United States to invade Iraq.

In early 2003, the United States, United Kingdom, and Spain proposed another resolution on Iraq, which they called the "eighteenth resolution" to give Iraq a deadline to comply with previous resolutions before a possible military intervention. This proposed resolution was subsequently withdrawn for lack of support on the U.N. Security Council. In particular, NATO members France and Germany, together with Russia, were opposed to a military intervention in Iraq, on the ground that it would be very risky, in terms of security, for the international community, and defended a diplomatic process of disarmament. 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 organised public protests. According to the 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 March 2003, UN weapons inspector Hans Blix reported in regard to Iraq that, "No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found," 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.

Regarding Saddam Hussein's ties to Al-Qaeda, the Bush administration has produced inconsistent statements. Asked to describe the connection between the Iraqi leader and the al-Qaeda terror network at an appearance on October 5, 2004 at the Council on Foreign Relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld first refused to answer, then said: "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two." Several hours after his appearance, Rumsfeld issued a statement from the Pentagon saying his comment "regrettably was misunderstood" by some. He said he has said since September 2002 that there were ties between Osama bin Laden’s terror group and Iraq. Despite statements from the Bush administration, inspectors never found any evidence of WMD in Iraq, and the September 11 Commission reported no collaborative relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

The are also serious legal questions surrounding the conduct of the war in 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 UN charter. From our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."

2003: Invasion

Map of major operations and battles of the Iraq War as of 2007

Main articles: 2003 in Iraq, 2003 Iraq war timeline, and List of people associated with the 2003 invasion of Iraq

See also: Coalition military operations of the Iraq War and Iraq War order of battle

The 2003 invasion of Iraq, led by General Tommy Franks, began on March 20, under the U.S. codename "Operation Iraqi Freedom." The British military's codename for their participation in the invasion was called Operation Telic. The coalition forces cooperated with Kurdish peshmerga forces in the north. Approximately forty other nations, dubbed the "coalition of the willing," also participated by providing equipment, services and security as well as special forces. The initial coalition military forces were roughly 300,000, of which 98% were U.S. and British troops. Saddam's army was quickly overwhelmed and on April 9 Baghdad fell to U.S. forces. American infantrymen seized deserted Baath Party ministries and pulled down a huge iron statue of Saddam Hussein, ending his 24-year rule of Iraq. However looting of government offices and serious disorder broke out soon after and Hussein's fighting forces melted away in large portions of the city. On April 13 Tikrit, the home town of Saddam Hussein, and the last town not under control of the coalition, was taken by the Marines of Task Force Tripoli. Perhaps to the surprise of many, there was little resistance. On April 15 the coalition partners claimed that the war was effectively over.

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) سلطة الائتلاف الموحدة, 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 for only a brief time. 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) programmes developed by Iraq. It consisted of a 1,400-member international team organised 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. The ISG has been unable to find these.

End of major combat operations

Main article: Post-invasion Iraq, 2003–2006

Further information: U.S. list of most-wanted Iraqis and Terrorist attacks of the Iraq War

The USS Abraham Lincoln returning to port carrying its Mission Accomplished banner

On May 1, 2003, President Bush staged a dramatic visit to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln while the ship was 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 his 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, the coalition military 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 Iraqi insurgency. The insurgents were further helped by hundreds of weapons caches created by the conventional Iraqi army and Republican Guard beforehand.

Initially, the resistance largely stemmed from fedayeen and loyalists of Saddam Hussein or the Baath Party, but soon religious radicals and Iraqis angered by the occupation contributed to the insurgency. The insurgents are generally known to the Coalition forces as "Anti-Iraqi Forces."

May 18, 2004. Staff Sgt. Kevin Jessen checks the underside of two anti-tank mines found in a village outside Ad Dujayl,[1] Iraq in the Sunni Triangle.

Most initial insurgency was concentrated in the Sunni Triangle, which includes Baghdad. The three provinces that had the highest number of attacks were Baghdad, Anbar, and Salah Ad Din. -Those 3 provinces account for 35% of the population, but are responsible for 73% of U.S. military deaths (as of December 5, 2006), and an even higher percentage of recent U.S. military deaths (about 80%). This resistance has been described as a type of guerrilla warfare. Insurgent tactics include mortars, missiles, suicide attacks, snipers (cf. Juba, the Baghdad Sniper), improvised explosive devices (IEDs), roadside bombs, car bombs, small arms fire (usually with assault rifles), and RPGs (rocket propelled grenades), as well as sabotage against the oil, water, and electrical infrastructure.

Post-invasion Iraq coalition efforts commenced after the fall of the Hussein regime. The coalition nations, together with the United Nations, began to work to establish a stable democratic state capable of defending itself, holding itself together as well as overcoming insurgent attacks and internal divisions.

Meanwhile, coalition military forces launched several operations around the Tigris River peninsula and in the Sunni Triangle. A series of similar operations were launched throughout the summer in the Sunni Triangle. Toward the end of 2003, the intensity and pace of insurgent attacks began to increase. A sharp surge in guerrilla attacks ushered in an insurgent effort that was termed the "Ramadan Offensive", as it coincided with the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Coalition forces brought to bear the use of air power for the first time since the end of the invasion. Suspected ambush sites and mortar launching positions were struck from the air and with artillery fire. Surveillance of major routes, patrols, and raids on suspected insurgents were stepped up. In addition, two villages, including Saddam’s birthplace of al-Auja and the small town of Abu Hishma were wrapped in barbed wire and carefully monitored.

However, the failure to restore basic services to above pre-war levels, where over a decade of sanctions, bombing, corruption, and decaying infrastructure had left major cities functioning at much-reduced levels, also contributed to local anger at the IPA government headed by an executive council. On July 2 2003, President Bush declared that American troops would remain in Iraq in spite of the attacks, challenging the insurgents with "My answer is, bring 'em on", a line which was widely criticised and the President later expressed misgivings about having used it. In the summer of 2003, the multinational forces also focused on hunting down the remaining leaders of the former regime. On July 22, during a raid by the U.S. 101st Airborne Division and soldiers from Task Force 20, Saddam Hussein's sons (Uday and Qusay) and one of his grandsons were killed. In all, over 300 top leaders of the former regime were killed or captured, as well as numerous lesser functionaries and military personnel.

Saddam Hussein captured

Saddam Hussein shortly after capture

See also: Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal and Trial of Saddam Hussein

In the wave of intelligence information fueling the raids on remaining Baath Party members connected to insurgency, Saddam Hussein himself was captured on December 13 2003 on a farm near Tikrit in Operation Red Dawn. The operation was conducted by the United States Army's 4th Infantry Division and members of Task Force 121.

With the capture of Saddam and a drop in the number of insurgent attacks, some concluded the multinational forces were prevailing in the fight against the insurgency. The provisional government began training the New Iraqi Security forces intended to defend the country, and the United States promised over $20 billion in reconstruction money in the form of credit against Iraq's future oil revenues. Oil revenue was also used for rebuilding schools and for work on the electrical and refining infrastructure.

Shortly after the capture of Saddam, elements left out of the Coalition Provisional Authority began to agitate for elections and the formation of an Iraqi Interim Government. Most prominent among these was the Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The Coalition Provisional Authority opposed allowing democratic elections at this time, preferring instead to eventually hand-over power to the Interim Iraqi Government. Due to the internal fight for power in the new Iraqi government more insurgents stepped up their activities. The two most turbulent centers were the area around Fallujah and the poor Shia sections of cities from Baghdad (Sadr City) to Basra in the south.

2004: The insurgency expands

Main article: 2004 in Iraq

See also: Military operations of the Iraq War for a list of all Coalition operations for this period, 2004 in Iraq, Iraqi coalition counter-insurgency operations, History of Iraqi insurgency, United States occupation of Fallujah, Iraq Spring Fighting of 2004

The start of 2004 was marked by a relative lull in violence. Insurgent forces reorganised during this time, studying the multinational forces' tactics and planning a renewed offensive. Guerrilla attacks were less intense. However, violence was ratcheted up in a major way in the Iraq Spring Fighting of 2004 with foreign fighters from around the Middle East as well as al-Qaeda in Iraq (an affiliated al-Qaeda group), led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi helping to drive the insurgency.

New Iraqi flag proposed by the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2004 and abandoned after widespread criticism that its colors and motifs were too similar to the flag of Israel

As the insurgent activity increased, there was a distinct change in targeting from the coalition forces towards the new Iraqi Security Forces, as hundreds of Iraqi civilians and police were killed over the next few months in a series of massive bombings. One hypothesis for these increased bombings is that the relevance of Saddam Hussein and his followers was diminishing in direct proportion to the influence of radical Islamists, both foreign and Iraqi. An organised Sunni insurgency, with deep roots and both nationalist and Islamist motivations, was becoming more powerful throughout Iraq. The Mahdi Army also began launching attacks on coalition targets in an attempt to seize control from Iraqi security forces. The southern and central portions of Iraq were beginning to erupt in urban guerrilla combat as multinational forces attempted to keep control and prepared for a counteroffensive.

The most serious fighting of the war so far was initiated on March 31, 2004 when Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah ambushed a convoy containing four American private military contractors from Blackwater USA who were conducting delivery for food caterers Eurest Support Services. The four private armed contractors, Scott Helvenston, Jerko Zovko, Wesley Batalona and Michael Teague, were killed with grenades and small arms fire, their bodies dragged from their vehicles, beaten and set ablaze. Their burned corpses were then dragged through the streets before being hung over a bridge crossing the Euphrates. Photos of the event were released to news agencies worldwide, causing a great deal of indignation and moral outrage in the United States, and prompting an unsuccessful "pacification" of the city: the First Battle of Fallujah in April 2004.

File:Iraq streetfight.jpg

Nov. 9, 2004. A U.S. marine next to the dead body of a suspected insurgent during the ground offensive in Fallujah, Iraq.

The offensive was resumed in November, 2004 in the bloodiest battle of the war so far: the Second Battle of Fallujah, described by the U.S. military as "the heaviest urban combat since the battle of Hue City in Vietnam." During the assault, U.S. forces used white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon against insurgent personnel, attracting controversy. The battle lasted 10 days and resulted in the deaths of over 1000 insurgents and 54 Americans. The town of Fallujah was totally devastated during the fighting, though civilian casualties were low, as they had mostly been evacuated before the fight to make way for a set piece confrontation between the two opponents - which the American forces won.

The other major event of this year was the revelation of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib which received international media attention in April 2004. First reports of the abuse, as well as graphic pictures showing American military personnel in the act of abusing prisoners, came to public attention, when a 60 Minutes II news report (April 28) and an article by Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker magazine (posted online on April 30 and published days later in the May 10 issue) reported the story.. According to Thomas Ricks' history of the conflict these revelations dealt a body-blow to the moral justifications for the occupation in the eyes of the Iraqis and the international community and were a turning point in the war.

2005: Elections and sovereignty transferred

Main article: 2005 in Iraq

On January 31, Iraqis elected the Iraqi Transitional Government in order to draft a permanent constitution. Although some violence and widespread Sunni boycott marred the event, most of the eligible Kurd and Shia populace participated. On February 4, Paul Wolfowitz announced that 15,000 U.S. troops whose tours of duty had been extended in order to provide election security would be pulled out of Iraq by the next month. February to April proved to be relatively peaceful months compared to the carnage of November and January, with insurgent attacks averaging 30 a day from the prior average of 70.

Hopes for a quick end to an insurgency and a withdrawal of U.S. troops were dashed in May, Iraq's bloodiest month since the invasion. Suicide bombers, believed to be mainly disheartened Iraqi Sunni Arabs, Syrians and Saudis, tore through Iraq. Their targets were often Shia gatherings or civilian concentrations mainly of Shias. As a result, over 700 Iraqi civilians died in that month, as well as 79 U.S. soldiers.

A constitutional referendum was held in October and a national assembly was elected in December .

2006: Permanent Iraqi government and civil war

Main articles: 2006 in Iraq and Civil war in Iraq

The beginning of 2006 was marked by government creation talks, growing sectarian violence, and continuous anti-coalition attacks. Sectarian violence expanded to a new level of intensity following the al-Askari Mosque bombing in the Iraqi city of Samarra, on February 22, 2006. The explosion at the mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shi'a Islam, is believed to have been caused by a bomb planted by Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Although no injuries occurred in the blast, the mosque was severely damaged and the bombing resulted in violence over the following days. Over 100 dead bodies with bullet holes were found on February 23, and at least 165 people are thought to have been killed. In the aftermath of this attack the US military calculated that the average homicide rate in Baghdad tripled from 11 to 33 deaths per day.The United Nations has since described the environment in Iraq as a "civil war-like situation." A 2006 study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has estimated that more than 601,000 Iraqis have died in violence since the U.S. invasion and that fewer than one third of these deaths came at the hands of Coalition forces. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Iraqi government estimate that more than 365,000 Iraqis have been displaced since the bombing of the al-Askari Mosque, bringing the total number of Iraqi refugees to more than 1.6 million.

The current government of Iraq took office on May 20, 2006 following approval by the members of the Iraqi National Assembly. This followed the general election in December 2005. The government succeeded the Iraqi Transitional Government which had continued in office in a caretaker capacity until the new government was agreed.

Increased sectarian violence

In September 2006, The Washington Post reported that the commander of the Marine forces in Iraq filed "an unusual secret report" concluding that the prospects for securing the Anbar province are dim, and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there.

Iraq was listed fourth on the 2006 Failed States Index compiled by the American Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace think-tank. The list was topped by Sudan.

As of October 20 the U.S military announced that Operation Together Forward had failed to stem the tide of violence in Baghdad, and Shiite militants under al-Sadr seized several southern Iraq cities.

U.S. congressional elections and expanding violence

See also: Sadr City bombings

On November 7, 2006, United States midterm elections removed Bush's Republican Party from control of both chambers of the United States Congress. The failings in the Iraq war was cited as one of the main causes even though the Bush administration attempted to distance itself from its earlier "stay the course" rhetoric.

On November 23, the deadliest attack since the beginning of the Iraq war occurred. Suspected Sunni-Arab militants used five suicide car bombs and two mortar rounds on the capital's Shiite Sadr City slum to kill at least 215 people and wound 257. Shiite mortar teams quickly retaliated, firing 10 shells at Sunni Islam's most important shrine in Baghdad, badly damaging the Abu Hanifa mosque and killing one person. Eight more rounds slammed down near the offices of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the top Sunni Muslim organisation in Iraq, setting nearby houses on fire. Two other mortar barrages on Sunni neighborhoods in west Baghdad killed nine and wounded 21, police said.

On November 28, another Marine Corps intelligence report was released confirming the previous report on Anbar stating that, "U.S. and Iraqi troops 'are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar,' and 'nearly all government institutions from the village to provincial levels have disintegrated or have been thoroughly corrupted and infiltrated by Al Qaeda in Iraq.'"

Iraq Study Group report and Saddam's execution

File:TrialSaddam.jpg

Hussein at his appearance before the Iraqi Special Tribunal on July 1, 2004.

Main articles: Iraq Study Group and Execution of Saddam Hussein

Iraq Study Group Report was released on December 6, 2006. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group was led by former secretary of state James Baker and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton, and concludes that "the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" and "U.S. forces seem to be caught in a mission that has no foreseeable end." The report's 79 recommendations include increasing diplomatic measures with Iran and Syria and intensifying efforts to train Iraqi troops. On December 18, a Pentagon report finds that attacks on Americans and Iraqis average about 960 a week, the highest since the reports began in 2005.

Coalition forces formally transferred control of a province to the Iraqi government, the first since the war. Military prosecutors charged 8 Marines with the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in November 2005, 10 of them women and children. Four officers were also charged with dereliction of duty in relation to the event.

After capture in December 2003, Saddam Hussein was hanged on December 30, 2006 after being found guilty of crimes against humanity by an Iraqi court.

2007: U.S. troop surge

Main article: Iraq War troop surge of 2007

Further information: 2007 in Iraq

In a January 10, 2007 televised address to the American public, Bush proposed 21,500 more troops for Iraq, a job programme for Iraqis, more reconstruction proposals, and 1.2 billion dollars for these programmes. Asked why he thought his plan would work this time, Bush said: "Because it has to." In the 2007 State of the Union Address, Bush announced "deploying reinforcements of more than 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq." 2007 also saw a sharp increase in insurgent chlorine bombings.

Increasing demands on U.S. troops

Further information: Kill or Capture strategy

Maintaining higher troop levels in the face of higher casualties required two changes in the army. Tours of duty were increased and the exclusions of volunteers with a history of criminal acts were relaxed (Moral Waiver). Both of these changes are expected to increase the probability of violence against Iraqi noncombatants. A defense department sponsored report described increased length of tours leading to higher stress which increase manifestations of anger and disrespect for civilians.

John Hutson, dean and president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire and former judge advocate general of the Navy, said the military must tread carefully in deciding which criminals to accept. There is a reason, he said, why allowing people with criminal histories into the military has long been the exception rather than the rule. "If you are recruiting somebody who has demonstrated some sort of antisocial behavior and then you are a putting a gun in their hands, you have to be awfully careful about what you are doing. You are not putting a hammer in their hands, or asking them to sell used cars. You are potentially asking them to kill people."

In April, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that all active-duty Army soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will serve for sixteen months, instead of the twelve month tours they expected. "Without this action, we would have had to deploy five Army active-duty brigades sooner than the 12-month at-home goal", Gates said. Statistics released in April indicated that more and more soldiers have been deserting their duty, a sharp rise from the years before.

British Land Rover Wolfs on patrol around Basra

Pressures on U.S. troops are compounded by the imminent withdrawal of a significant porton of British forces. On February 21, 2007 British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that following the success of Operation Sinbad the UK will reduce its troops in Iraq as it handed off Basra Governorate to the Iraqis: the 7,100 serving troops would be cut to 5,500 in the coming months, with hopes that 500 more will leave by late summer. He also stated that British forces would remain into 2008 and did not predict how many troops are likely to be there next year. Cheney hailed this as proof of success in Iraq. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen also announced the withdrawal of Danish troops from Iraq. The 450 Danish troops left the country at the end of July, leaving only a unit of nine soldiers manning four observational helicopters.

The rate of American deaths in Baghdad over the first seven weeks of the "surge" security escalation has nearly doubled from the previous period. According to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Monitor, U.S. troop deaths since the beginning of the escalation have been "running at 3.14/day, which is the highest of any period since the end of major combat."

Effects of the surge on security

U.S. soldiers take cover during a firefight with insurgents in the Al Doura section of Baghdad March 7, 2007

By mid-March 2007, violence in Baghdad was reported by US sources close to the military as having been curtailed by 80%; however, independent reports have raised questions about such assessments. An Iraqi military spokesman claims that civilian deaths since the start of the troop surge plan were 265 in Baghdad, down from 1,440 in the four previous weeks. The New York Times has found more than 450 Iraqi civilians were killed during the same 28-day period, based on initial daily reports from Interior Ministry and hospital officials. Historically, the daily counts tallied by the NYT have underestimated the total death toll by 50% or more when compared to studies by the United Nations, which rely upon figures from the Iraqi Health Ministry and morgue figures.

Late March, 2007, the US Congress passed supplemental funding authorisation bills to pay $122 billion for emergency war operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, including requirements that the US withdraw its troops from Iraq by August, 2008. Bush threatened to veto any bill including such a withdraw provision. The United States Senate approved on March 30, 2007 the goal of getting all combat soldiers out by March 31, 2008. The Senate's shorter timetable is a goal, not a requirement on Bush and is designed to win the support of centrist Democrats.

March 2, 2007. A medic lifts a wounded Iraqi police officer into an ambulance at Forward Operating Base Normandy.

Despite a massive security crackdown in Baghdad associated with the "surge" in coalition troop strength, the monthly death toll in Iraq rose 15% in March. 1,869 Iraqi civilians were killed and 2,719 were wounded in March, compared to 1,646 killed and 2,701 wounded in February. In March, 165 Iraqi policemen were killed against 131 the previous month, while 44 Iraqi soldiers died compared to 29 in February. US military deaths in March were nearly double those of the Iraqi army, despite US claims that Iraqi forces led the security crackdown in Baghdad. The death toll among insurgent militants fell to 481 in March, compared to 586 killed in February; however, the number of arrests jumped to 5,664 in March against 1,921 in February.

Three months after the start of the surge, troops controlled less than a third of the capital, far short of the initial goal, according to an internal military assessment completed in May 2007. Violence was especially chronic in mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhoods in western Baghdad. Improvements had not yet been widespread or lasting across Baghdad.

Worsening humanitarian crisis

A March 2007 survey of more than 2,000 Iraqis commissioned by the BBC and three other news organizations found that 51% of the population consider attacks on coalition forces "acceptable," up from 17% in 2004 and 35% in 2006. Also:

• 64% described their family's economic situation as being somewhat or very bad, up from 30% in 2005.
• 88% described the availability of electricity as being either somewhat or very bad, up from 65% in 2004.
• 69% described the availability of clean water as somewhat or very bad, up from 48% in 2004.
• 88% described the availability of fuel for cooking and driving as being somewhat or very bad.
• 58% described reconstruction efforts in the area in which they live as either somewhat or very ineffective, and 9% described them as being totally nonexistent.

American medic tends to some minor injuries after two car bombs exploded Nov. 18, 2005 near a residential area in Baghdad.

In a report entitled "Civilians without Protection: The Ever-Worsening Humanitarian Crisis in Iraq", produced well after the stepped-up American-led military operations in Baghdad began February 14, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement said that millions of Iraqis are in a disastrous situation that is getting worse, with medical professionals fleeing the country after their colleagues were killed or abducted. Mothers are appealing for someone to pick up the bodies on the street so their children will be spared the horror of looking at them on their way to school. Red Cross Director of Operations Pierre Kraehenbuehl said that hospitals and other key services are desperately short of staff, with more than half the doctors said to have already left the country.

More than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country for the first time. 144 of the 275 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition that would require the Iraqi government to seek approval from parliament before it requests an extension of the U.N. mandate for foreign forces to be in Iraq expiring at the end of 2007. It also calls for a timetable for the troop withdrawal and a freeze on the size of the foreign forces. The U.N. Security Council mandate for U.S.-led forces in Iraq will terminate "if requested by the government of Iraq." Under Iraqi law, the speaker must present a resolution called for by a majority of lawmakers. 59% of those polled in the U.S. support a timetable for withdrawal.

March 20, 2007. A soldier carries a wounded Iraqi child into the Charlie Medical Centre at Camp Ramadi, Iraq.

According to an anonymous Iraqi government official, 1,944 civilians and at least 174 soldiers and policemen were killed in May, 2007, a 29% increase in civilian deaths over April. The Iraqi government's estimate of the number of civilian deaths has always been much lower than reports from independent researchers, such as the Lancet surveys of mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Mortar attacks in the capital are becoming deadlier.

Between June 18 and July 18, 2007, up to 592 unidentified bodies were found dumped in Baghdad. Most of the approximately 20 per day found by the police have been bound, blindfolded and shot execution style. The police attribute these deaths to Sunni and Shi’ite death squads. According to Baghdad medical sources, many have also shown signs of torture and mutilation. Despite official Iraqi and U.S. statements to the contrary, the reports indicate that the number of unidentified bodies in the capital has risen to pre-surge levels over the last two months. Media reports have indicated that the U.S. military has usually focused on areas where they have been attacked rather than districts witnessing such sectarian reprisal killings.

On August 14th, 2007 the deadliest single attack of the whole war occurred. About 350 civilians were killed by a series of co-ordinated suicide bomb attacks on the northern Iraqi settlement of Qahtaniya. More than 100 homes and shops were destroyed in the blasts. US officials blamed al-Qaeda in Iraq. The targeted villagers belong to the non-Muslim Yazidi ethnic minority. The attack may represent the latest spasm in a blood feud that erupted earlier this year when members of the Yazidi community stoned to death a teenage girl called Du’a Khalil Aswad accused of dating a Sunni Arab man and converting to Islam. The killing of the girl was recorded on camera-mobiles and the video was downloaded onto the internet .

Coalition support of Sunni militias

In mid-2007, the Coalition began a controversial program to recruit Iraqi Sunnis for the formation of "Guardian" militias. These Guardian militias are intended to support and secure various Sunni neighborhoods unable to provide internal security themselves.

Coalition troop deployment

Main article: Multinational Force in Iraq

See also: Dancon/Irak, Deployment of Japanese troops to Iraq, Polish involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Australian contribution to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and Operation Telic order of battle

United Nations

The United Nations has also deployed a small contingent to Iraq to protect UN staff and guard their compounds.

United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI)

• Georgia: 550 blue-helmets
• Fiji: 168 blue-helmets
• Romania: 130 blue-helmets
• Denmark: 35 blue-helmets
• Canada: 1 blue-helmet

Armed Iraqi groups: insurgents and militias

Further information: History of Iraqi insurgency, Sectarian violence in Iraq, and Iraqi coalition counter-insurgency operations

The Iraqi insurgency is the armed resistance by diverse groups, including private militias, within Iraq opposing the US occupation of Iraq and to the U.S.-supported Iraqi government. The fighting has clear sectarian overtones and significant international implications (see Civil war in Iraq). This asymmetric warfare is being waged by Iraqi rebels, almost certainly with assistance from both foreign governments (possibly Syria and/or Iran) and loosely termed NGOs. This campaign is called the Iraqi resistance by its supporters and the anti-Iraqi forces(AIF) by Coalition forces.

Insurgents

Main article: Iraqi insurgency

U.S. troops pass by burning oil fields while convoying to Al Jawala, Iraq, during an operation.

By the fall of 2003, these insurgent groups began using typical guerrilla tactics such as ambushes, bombings, kidnappings, and IEDs. Other tactics included mortars, suicide attacks, explosively formed penetrators, small arms fire, anti-aircraft missiles (SA-7, SA-14, SA-16) and RPGs, as well as sabotage against the oil, water, and electrical infrastructure. Multi-national Force-Iraq statistics (see detailed BBC graphic) show that the insurgents primarily targeted coalition forces, Iraqi security forces and infrastructure, and lastly civilians and government officials. These irregular forces favored attacking unarmored or lightly armored Humvee vehicles, the U.S. military's primary transport vehicle, primarily through the roadside IED. In November 2003, some of these forces successfully attacked U.S. rotary aircraft with SA-7 missiles bought on the global black market. Insurgent groups such as the al-Abud Network have even attempted to constitute their own chemical weapons programs, attempting to weaponise traditional mortar rounds with ricin and mustard toxin.

There is evidence that some guerrilla groups are organised, perhaps by the fedayeen and other Saddam Hussein or Baath loyalists, religious radicals, Iraqis angered by the occupation, and foreign fighters. On February 23, 2005 Al-Iraqiya TV (Iraq) aired transcripts of confessions by Syrian intelligence officer Anas Ahmad Al-Issa and Iraqi insurgent Shihab Al-Sab'awi concerning their booby-trap operations, explosions, kidnappings, assassinations, and details of beheading training in Syria.

In addition to internal strife, Iran may be playing a role in the insurgency. U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Michael Barbero said, "Iran is definitely a destabilising force in Iraq. (...) I think it's irrefutable that Iran is responsible for training, funding and equipping some of these Shia extremist groups."

Militias

Main articles: Mahdi Army and Badr Organization

Two of the most powerful current militias are the Mahdi Army and the Badr Organization, with both militias having substantial political support as well in the current Iraqi government. Initially, both organisations were involved in the Iraqi insurgency, most clearly seen with the Mahdi Army at the Battle of Najaf. However in recent months, there has been a split between the two groups.

This violent break between Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the rival Badr Organization of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, was seen in the fighting in the town of Amarah on October 20, 2006, would severely complicate the efforts of Iraqi and American officials to quell the soaring violence in Iraq.

More recently in late 2005 and 2006, due to increasing sectarian violence based on either tribal/ethnic distinctions or simply due to increased criminal violence, various militias have formed, with whole neighborhoods and cities sometimes being protected or attacked by ethnic or neighborhood militias. One such group, known as the Anbar Awakening, was formed in September 2006 to fight against Al Qaeda and other radical islamist groups in the particularly violent Anbar province. Led by Sheik and Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, who heads the Sunni Anbar Salvation Council, the Anbar Awakening has more than 6,000 troops and is seen by key U.S. officials such as Condoleeza Rice as a potential ally to U.S. occupation forces.

Casualties

Main article: Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003

See also: Suicide bombings in Iraq since 2003, Foreign hostages in Iraq, List of Coalition forces killed in Iraq in 2006, Iraq Body Count project, Lancet surveys of mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and List of insurgents killed in Iraq

A US marine killed in April 2003 is carried away after receiving his last rites.

For coalition death totals see the infobox at the top right. See also the above main article. It has casualty numbers for coalition nations, contractors, non-Iraqi civilians, journalists, media helpers, aid workers, wounded, etc.. The main article also gives explanations for the wide variation in estimates and counts, and shows many ways in which undercounting occurs. Casualty figures, especially Iraqi ones, are highly disputed. This section gives a brief overview.

U.S. General Tommy Franks reportedly estimated soon after the invasion that there had been 30,000 Iraqi casualties as of April 9, 2003. After this initial estimate he made no further public estimates.

In December 2005 President Bush said there were 30,000 Iraqi dead. White House spokesman Scott McClellan later said it was "not an official government estimate", and was based on media reports.

File:IraqiKilledApr2003ByMarinesDefendingBridge.jpg

Iraqi soldier killed in April 2003 by US Marines.

There have been several attempts by the media, coalition governments and others to estimate the Iraqi casualties:

• The Lancet surveys of mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq estimates 654,965 Iraqi deaths (range of 392,979-942,636) from March 2003 to July 2006. That total number of deaths (all Iraqis) includes all excess deaths due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poorer healthcare, etc, and includes civilians, military deaths and insurgent deaths. This is the only figure presented here which is intended to show the total excess deaths (rather than lower limits, provided by surveys of only those deaths reported to authorities or media agencies). However, the survey results have been criticised as exaggerated.
• The United Nations found that 34,452 violent civilian deaths were reported by morgues, hospitals, and municipal authorities across Iraq in 2006.
• The Iraqi ministries of Health, Defence and Interior said that 14,298 civilians, 1,348 police, and 627 soldiers were killed in 2006. The Iraqi government does not count deaths classed as "criminal", nor those from kidnappings, nor wounded persons who die later as the result of attacks. However "a figure of 3700 civilian deaths in October 2006, the latest tally given by the UN based on data from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue, was branded exaggerated by the Iraqi Government."
• The Iraq Body Count project states for the week ending December 31, 2006: "It was a truly violent year, as around 24,000 civilians lost their lives in Iraq. This was a massive rise in violence: 14,000 had been killed in 2005, 10,500 in 2004 and just under 12,000 in 2003 (7,000 of them killed during the actual war, while only 5,000 killed during the ‘peace’ that followed in May 2003). In December 2006 alone around 2,800 civilians were reported killed. This week there were over 560 civilian deaths reported." Only deaths reported by respected media agencies are included in these figures.
• In November 2006 Iraq's Health Minister Ali al-Shemari said that since the March 2003 invasion between 100,000 and 150,000 Iraqis have been killed. "Al-Shemari said on Thursday [Nov. 9] that he based his figure on an estimate of 100 bodies per day brought to morgues and hospitals – though such a calculation would come out closer to 130,000 in total."

Humanitarian crises

See also "Worsening humanitarian crisis" above.

Iraqi health care deterioration

Iraq's health has deteriorated to a level not seen since the 1950s, said Joseph Chamie, former director of the U.N. Population Division and an Iraq specialist. "They were at the forefront", he said, referring to health care just before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. "Now they're looking more and more like a country in sub-Saharan Africa." Malnutrition rates have risen from 19% before the US-led invasion to a national average of 28% four years later. Some 60-70% of Iraqi children are suffering from psychological problems.

Iraqi refugees

Main article: Refugees of Iraq

Further information: Iraqi diaspora

As of November 4, 2006, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that 1.8 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighboring countries, and 1.6 million were displaced internally, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month.

As of 2007 more Iraqis have lost their homes and become refugees than the population of any other country. Over 3.9 million people, close to 16% of the Iraqi population, have become uprooted. Of these, around 2 million have fled Iraq and flooded other countries, and 1.9 million are estimated to be refugees inside Iraq.

File:Chaldeansinjordan.jpg

Iraqis fleeing to neighboring countries.

Roughly 40% of Iraq's middle class is believed to have fled, the U.N. said. Most are fleeing systematic persecution and have no desire to return. All kinds of people, from university professors to bakers, have been targeted by militias, insurgents and criminals. An estimated 331 school teachers were slain in the first four months of 2006, according to Human Rights Watch, and at least 2,000 Iraqi doctors have been killed and 250 kidnapped since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

A May 25, 2007 article notes that in the past seven months only 69 people from Iraq have been granted refugee status in the United States. As a result of growing international pressure, on June 1, 2007 the Bush administration said it was ready to admit 7,000 Iraqi refugees who had helped the coalition since the invasion. According to Washington based Refugees International the U.S. has admitted fewer than 800 Iraqi refugees since the invasion, Sweden had accepted 18,000 and Australia almost 6,000. As many as 110,000 Iraqis could be targeted as collaborators because of their work for coalition forces.

UNHCR estimates that Christians comprise 24% of Iraqis seeking asylum in Syria, although only 8-12% of the overall population belonged to a Christian denomination. Iraq's Christian community numbered 1.4 million in 1980 at the start of Iran-Iraq War. But as the 2003 invasion has radicalized Islamic sensibilities, Iraqi Christians' total numbers slumped to about 500,000, of whom 250,000 live in Baghdad. At least 50% of Iraq’s Christians may already have fled the country. Furthermore, the small Mandaean community is at the risk of elimination due to ethnic cleansing by Islamic extremists.

Human rights abuses

Main articles: Human rights in occupied Iraq, Iraq prison abuse scandals, Nature of Abu Ghraib abuse, and Suicide bombings in Iraq since 2003

U.S. Army Private Lynndie England holding a leash attached to a prisoner collapsed on the floor in the Abu Ghraib prison

Throughout the entire Iraq war there have been numerous human rights abuses on all sides of the conflict.

Allegations of serious human right abuses by Coalition forces include:

• the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
• white phosphorus use in Iraq
• the Haditha killings of 24 civilians in Haditha, including women and children (under investigation)
• the murder of 11 civilians in Ishaqi, including five children (under investigation)
• the kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi man named Hashim Ibrahim Awad (under investigation)
• the gang-rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl and the murder of her family, in Mahmudiyah (Jailed for life) [2]
• the bombing and shooting of 42 civilians in Mukaradeeb (under investigation)
• controversy over whether disproportionate force was used, during the assaults by Coalition and (mostly Shia and Kurdish) Iraqi government forces on the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah in 2004. Fatalities (both combatant and civilian) were estimated in the hundreds, and much of the city destroyed.

There have also been reported human rights abuses by some of the thousands of private military contractors working in Iraq. The most notorious case involving them was the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse.

Insurgent and militia forces have also committed numerous human rights violations including:

• Killing over 12,000 Iraqis from January 2005 - June 2006, according to Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, giving the first official count for the victims of bombings, ambushes and other deadly attacks. The insurgents have also conducted numerous suicide attacks on the Iraqi civilian population, mostly targeting the majority Shia community. An October 2005 report from Human Rights Watch examines the range of civilian attacks and their purported justification.
• Attacks on diplomats and diplomatic facilities including; the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003 killing the top U.N. representative in Iraq and 21 other UN staff members;beheading several diplomats: two Algerian diplomatic envoys Ali Belaroussi and Azzedine Belkadi, Egyptian diplomatic envoy al-Sherif, and four Russian diplomats.
• The February 2006 bombing of the al-Askari Mosque, destroying one of the holiest Shiite shrines, killing over 165 worshipers and igniting sectarian strife and reprisal killings.
• The publicised murders of several non-military personnel including; contractor Eugene Armstrong, contractor Jack Hensley, translator Kim Sun-il, contractor Kenneth Bigley, Bulgarian truck drivers Ivaylo Kepov and Georgi Lazov, Shosei Koda, Italian Fabrizio Quattrocchi, charity worker Margaret Hassan, reconstruction engineer Nick Berg, Italian photographer, 52 year old Salvatore Santoro and Iraqi supply worker Seif Adnan Kanaan. Most of these civilians were subjected to brutal torture and/or beheading.
• Torture or murder of members of the New Iraqi Army, and assassination of civilians associated with the Coalition Provisional Authority, such as Fern Holland, or the Iraqi Governing Council, such as Aqila al-Hashimi and Ezzedine Salim, or other foreign civilians, such as those from Kenya.

Other abuses have been blamed on the new Iraqi government, including:

• The use of torture by Iraqi security forces.
• Shiite-run death squads run out of the Interior Ministry that are accused of committing numerous massacres of Sunni Arabs and the police collusion with militias in Iraq have compounded the problems.

Relation to the Global War on Terror

Main article: Iraq War and U.S. Global War on Terror

President Bush has consistently referred to the Iraq war as "the central front in the War on Terror", and has argued that if the U.S. pulls out of Iraq, "terrorists will follow us here." While other proponents of the war have regularly echoed this assertion, as the conflict has dragged on, members of the U.S. Congress, the American public, and even U.S. troops have begun to question the connection between Iraq and the fight against terrorism. In particular, a consensus has developed among intelligence experts that the Iraq war has increased terrorism. Counterterrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna frequently refers to the invasion of Iraq as a "fatal mistake." London's conservative International Institute for Strategic Studies concluded in 2004 that the occupation of Iraq had become "a potent global recruitment pretext" for jihadists and that the invasion "galvanised" al-Qaeda and "perversely inspired insurgent violence" there. The U.S. National Intelligence Council concluded in a January 2005 report that the war in Iraq had become a breeding ground for a new generation of terrorists; David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, indicated that the report concluded that the war in Iraq provided terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills... There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries." The Council's Chairman Robert L. Hutchings said, "At the moment, Iraq is a magnet for international terrorist activity." And the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate, which outlined the considered judgment of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, held that "The Iraq conflict has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."

Al-Qaeda leaders have seen the Iraq war as a boon to their recruiting and operational efforts, providing evidence to jihadists worldwide that America is at war with Islam, and the training ground for a new generation of jihadists to practice attacks on American forces. In October 2003, Osama bin Laden announced: "Be glad of the good news: America is mired in the swamps of the Tigris and Euphrates. Bush is, through Iraq and its oil, easy prey. Here is he now, thank God, in an embarrassing situation and here is America today being ruined before the eyes of the whole world." Al-Qaeda commander Seif al-Adl gloated about the war in Iraq, indicating, "The Americans took the bait and fell into our trap." A letter thought to be from al-Qaeda leader Atiyah Abd al-Rahman found in Iraq among the rubble where al-Zarqawi was killed and released by the U.S. military in October 2006, indicated that al-Qaeda perceived the war as beneficial to its goals: "The most important thing is that the jihad continues with steadfastness ... indeed, prolonging the war is in our interest."

Further information: Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda timeline, Atta in Prague, and Criticism of the War on Terrorism

Criticism

Main article: Criticism of the Iraq War

The U.S. rationale for the Iraq War has faced heavy criticism from an array of popular and official sources both inside and outside the United States. Putting this controversy aside, both proponents and opponents of the invasion have also criticised the prosecution of the war effort along a number of lines. Most significantly, critics have assailed the U.S. and its allies for not devoting enough troops to the mission, not adequately planning for post-invasion Iraq, and for permitting and perpetrating widespread human rights abuses. As the war has progressed, critics have also railed against the high human and financial costs.

Criticisms include:

• Legality of the invasion
• Inadequate troop levels
• Insufficient post-invasion plans
• Human and financial costs
• Adverse effect on global war on terror
• Negative impact on Israel
• Endangerment of religious minorities
• Damage to America's traditional alliances and influence

Further information: Opposition to the Iraq War, Views on the 2003 invasion of Iraq, 2003 invasion of Iraq, Protests against the Iraq War, American popular opinion on invasion of Iraq, Governments' positions pre-2003 invasion of Iraq, 2003 invasion of Iraq media coverage, and Legitimacy of the 2003 invasion of Iraq

Opinions on the war

International

According to a January 2007 BBC World Service poll of more than 26,000 people in 25 countries, 73% of the global population disapproves of the U.S. handling of the Iraq War. According to an April 2004 USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll, only a third of the Iraqi people believed that "the American-led occupation of their country is doing more good than harm, and a solid majority support an immediate military pullout even though they fear that could put them in greater danger." However, majorities in the U.K. and Canada believe the war in Iraq is "unjustified" and are critical of their government's support of U.S. policies in Iraq. According to polls conducted by The Arab American Institute, four years after the invasion of Iraq, 83% of Egyptians had a negative view of the U.S.'s role in Iraq; 68% of Saudi Arabians at a negative view; 96% of the Jordanian population had a negative view; 70% of the UAE and 76% of the Lebanese population also described their view as negative. The Pew Global Attitudes Project reports that in 2006 majorities in the Netherlands, Germany, Jordan, France, Lebanon, China, Spain, Indonesia, China, Turkey, Pakistan, and Morocco believed the world was safer before the Iraq War and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. However, pluralities in the U.S. and India believe the world is safer without Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi

A WPO poll conducted on September 27, 2006, found that seven out of ten Iraqis want U.S.-led forces to withdraw from Iraq within one year. The perception that the U.S. presence in Iraq has a negative impact on security is widespread. Overall, 78% of those polled said they believed that the presence of U.S. forces is "provoking more conflict than it's preventing." 53% of those polled believed the Iraqi government would be strengthened if U.S. forces left Iraq (versus 23% who believed it would be weakened), and 71% wanted this to happen in 1 year or less. All of these positions are more prevalent amongst Sunni and Shia respondents than among Kurds. 61% of respondents said that they "approve" of attacks on U.S.-led forces, while 94% still had an unfavorable opinion of al-Qaeda.

A March 7, 2007 survey of more than 2,000 Iraqis commissioned by the BBC and three other news organisations found that 78% of the population opposes "the presence of Coalition forces in Iraq," that 69% believe the presence of U.S. forces is making things worse, and that and 51% of the population consider attacks on coalition forces "acceptable", up from 17% in 2004 and 35% in 2006. However, only 35% want them to leave "now". 64% described their family's economic situation as being somewhat or very bad, up from 30% in 2005. 58% described reconstruction efforts in the area in which they live as either somewhat or very ineffective, and 9% described them as being totally nonexistent.

U.S. troops

A Zogby poll in February 2006 determined that most U.S. troops serving in Iraq think that the U.S. should exit the country within a year, i.e. before February 2007. The poll found:

• "An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and nearly one in four say the troops should leave immediately"
• "89% of reserves and 82% of those in the National Guard said the U.S. should leave Iraq within a year, 58% of Marines think so."

Topical images

• 
  A satellite image of Iraq.
• The ethno-religious makeup of Iraq.
  The ethno-religious makeup of Iraq.
• The famous 9 April 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Firdos Square in Baghdad.
  The famous 9 April 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Firdos Square in Baghdad.
• US Marines assault an enemy position with a shoulder-mounted rocket. November 2004 in Fallujah during Operation Phantom Fury.
  US Marines assault an enemy position with a shoulder-mounted rocket. November 2004 in Fallujah during Operation Phantom Fury.
• 
  Anti-war demonstration, Seattle, Washington, 19 March 2007. "Veterans for Peace" sign.
• 
  A Latvian army soldier with Multinational Division (Central South) at a checkpoint on Tampa Road in Diwaniyah, Iraq.
• 
  A group of US Marines in Haditha, Iraq.
• 
  An Iraq war victim.
• 
  February 28, 2003. Iraqi troops on a tank before the Iraq War.
• 
  The Iraqi war victims.
• 
  The various occupation zones in Iraq.
• 
  George W. Bush on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003 to deliver the "Mission Accomplished" speech.

Bibliography

• Michael R. Gordon (2006) Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
• Thomas E. Ricks (2006) Fiasco, The American Military Adventure In Iraq. Penguin.

See also

• List of wars
• Al-Anfal Campaign
• Oil reserves in Iraq
• Energy crisis
• Refugees of Iraq
• Asylum in the United States
• United States Army
• Comparison of Iraq war to the Algerian War of Independence
• Comparison of Iraq and Vietnam wars
• Ayad Rahim, Iraqi-American journalist who reports on Middle East affairs

External articles

Overview

• Journalists in Iraq: Video of Panel Discussion
• Template:PDFlink
• ProCon's Extensive Iraq War Examination
• The Iraq war and the reconstruction effort
• Bleak Pentagon study admits 'civil war' in Iraq. Rupert Cornwell, The Independent 16 March 2007

Maps of Iraq

• High resolution maps of Iraq

Road to War

• "Plans For Iraq Attack Began on 9/11"; Information Act request to the Department of Defense seeking DoD staffer Stephen Cambone's notes from meetings with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the afternoon of September 11, 2001.
• White House Meeting Memo; Details of 31 January 2003 private meeting between George W. Bush and Tony Blair where they discussed using U.S. spyplanes in UN colours to lure Saddam Hussein into war.
• UK Attorney-General leak; Legal advice given to the British Prime Minister Tony Blair weeks before the 2003 invasion.
• Presidential address given by George W. Bush on the evening of March 19 2003, announcing war.

Iraqi sources

• Iraq Diaries – Iraqis writing about their experiences of war.
• The Ground Truth Project – A series of exclusive, in-depth interviews with Iraqis, aid workers, military personnel and others who have spent significant time on-the-ground in Iraq.
• What Iraqis Think – A compilation of the latest polls and blogs coming out of Iraq.
• Iraq documents on Weapons of Mass Destruction This is a U.S. military site containing approximately 1 million files captured from the Iraqi military in the aftermath of the invasion.

Opinions and polls

• Sean Rayment, "Secret MoD poll: Iraqis support attacks on British troops"; a poll conducted among Iraqis reveals strong opposition toward Allied presence in Iraq. The Daily Telegraph, 23 October 2005.
• Extraordinary renditions: the playwright and the president; Jeff Sommers, Khaled Diab and Charles Woolfson explore the dynamics between playwright and president as America's 'war on terror' stands in the dock. January 2006, published in Al Ahram Weekly
• Caspar Henderson, "Three polls: attitudes across frontiers". 12 December 2002.
• Karl Zinsmeister, What Iraqis Really Think. Wall Street Journal, September 10 2003.
• "1st Major Survey of Iraq". Zogby International, September 10 2003.
• Carl Conetta, "What do Iraqis want? Iraqi attitudes on occupation, U.S. withdrawal, governments, and quality of life". Project on Defense Alternatives, 01 February 2005.
• Iraq at Polling Report.com. Chronological polls of Americans 18 & older
• Public Agenda Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index – Tracking survey of Americans' attitudes on international relations, conducted for Foreign Affairs

Casualties

To find additional links not found in the reference links section here see Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003.

Combat operations related

• Aerial Propaganda Leaflet Database. Psywar.org, 06 November 2005. (Iraq War PSYOP leaflets and posters)

News

• Electronic Iraq: Daily news and analysis from Iraq with a special focus on the Iraqi experience of war.
• News from Iraq: Aggregated news on the war, including politics and economics.
• The Struggle for Iraq: BBC Best Link: All the latest news, analysis and images from Iraq.
• War in Iraq: CNN Special Report: This page was archived in May 2003 when President Bush declared an end to major combat. However, the coalition casualties' list continues to be updated.
• Iraq: Transition of Power: CNN Special Report: Three years later, debate rages.
• BBC: US soldiers Jailed for life

Anti-war activists and war critics

• Louis Farrakhan Wash., D.C. Press Conference on Neo-cons and the Iraq War
• David Shuster, "Road to war; How the Bush administration sold the Iraq War to American people". MSNBC, 8 November 2005
• Antiwar news and viewpoints [3]
• Mourning the Vote: Students (Boston University and Oglethorpe University) site
• OnlyOneWorld.NET Contains information, news, and opinion on the Iraq War.
• What Barry Says Written by Barry McNamara in 2003, Winner of the Best Animation award at the Brooklyn International Film Festival and Portobello Film Festival in 2004.
• [4] Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches. Independent journalist in Iraq. Many despatches, reports and photos.
• [5] Tales of Iraq War. Anti-war webcomics by cartoonist Latuff.
• The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq Socialist Worker Online’s ongoing coverage and analysis
• FixIraq.com 15 minute updated news, Discussion, Auto-Updating U.S. Deaths counter that can be shown on any website.
• "Unlike Vietnam, There is No End in Sight" iShotTheDeputy.com article criticising comparisons with Vietnam.
• Liam Anderson and Gareth Stansfield, The Future of Iraq: Dictatorship, Democracy or Division?, 2004, Palgrave Macmillian ISBN 1-4039-6354-1
• Juan Cole, [Iraq] Three-State Solution? The Nation review, March 29 2004
• Iraq Exit Strategy Watch

Independent analysis

• "The Road Ahead: Lessons in Nation Building from Japan, Germany, and Afghanistan for Postwar Iraq" by Ray Salvatore Jennings May 2003 Peceworks No. 49 United States Institute of Peace
• "A New American Century? - Iraq and the Hidden Euro-Dollar wars" by William Engdahl
• Oil and Empire - the backstory to the invasion of Iraq
• The Neocons, Peak Oil and the Invasion of Iraq
• "An ethical blank cheque" British and U.S. mythology about the second world war ignores our own crimes and legitimises Anglo-American war making, Richard Drayton, Tuesday May 10 2005 The Guardian

War supporters and operation proponents

• Victor Davis Hanson, An American 'Debacle'? More unjustified negativity on the war in Iraq. National Review Online, October 14 2005.
• Analogy presented by Jessica Well showing a Life magazine article from 1946 discussing the failures of Denazification entitled Americans are Losing the Victory in Europe
• "The Civilian Casualty Fable; Analysis of Civilian Casualties in the first two years of the Iraq War". Logic Times, 26 October 2005.

Economics

• Scott Wallsten and Katrina Kosec, "The Economic Costs of the War in Iraq". AEI-Brookings Joint Center Working Paper 05-19. September 2005.
• Online cost estimator allows users to change assumptions for predicting expected future cost of the Iraq war.
• Dollar cost of war: total of the U.S. taxpayer cost of the Iraq War
• Iraq war costs could top $2 trillion. Christian Science Monitor, 10 January 2006 based on The Economic Costs of the Iraq War by Linda Bilmes, Harvard University, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, laureate of the Nobel Prize of Economics in 2001.
• The Dollar System and U.S. Economic Reality post-Iraq War by William Engdahl

Judiciary

• Legal System in Iraq Staggers Beneath the Weight of War, New York Times December 17, 2006 (copy)

Media Echo

• Eliot Weinberger: What I Heard About Iraq in 2005, and What I Heard about Iraq (a collage of various statements concerning the war) dead link; these links active as of October 01 2006 link1 and link2
• Tatham, Steve (2006), 'Losing Arab Hearts & Minds: The Coalition, Al-Jazeera & Muslim Public Opinion' Hurst & Co (London) Published 1 January2006