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The United States Navy Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) Teams, commonly known as Navy SEALs, are the United States Navy's primary special operations force and a component of the United States Naval Special Warfare Command. Among the SEALs' main functions are conducting small-unit special operation missions in maritime, jungle, urban, arctic, mountainous, and desert environments. SEALs are typically ordered to capture or kill high-level targets, or to gather intelligence behind enemy lines. SEAL team personnel are hand-selected, highly trained, and possess a high degree of proficiency in unconventional warfare (UW), direct action (DA), and special reconnaissance (SR), among other tasks like sabotage, demolition, intelligence gathering, and hydrographic reconnaissance, training, and advising friendly militaries or other forces. All active SEALs are members of the U.S. Navy.
The following is a timeline of major events during the Iraq War, following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Events in the year 2004 in Iraq.
Fallujah is a city in Al Anbar Governorate, Iraq. Situated on the Euphrates River, it is located roughly 69 kilometres (43 mi) to the west of the capital city of Baghdad and 50 kilometres (31 mi) from the neighboring city of Ramadi. The city is located in the region defined as Sunni Triangle by the United States, as majority of its residents are Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslims. In 1947, Fallujah was a small town with a relatively small population but had grown to a population of about 250,900 people by 2018.
Academi, formerly known as Blackwater and Blackwater Worldwide, is an American private military contractor founded on December 26, 1997, by former Navy SEAL officer Erik Prince. It was renamed Xe Services in 2009, and was again renamed to Academi in 2011, after it was acquired by a group of private investors. In 2014, Academi merged with Triple Canopy to form Constellis Holdings.
The First Battle of Fallujah, code-named Operation Vigilant Resolve, was an operation against militants in Fallujah as well as an attempt to apprehend or kill the perpetrators of the killing of four U.S. contractors in March 2004.
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The United States bombardment of Fallujah began in April 2003, one month after the beginning of the invasion of Iraq. In April 2003 United States forces fired on a group of demonstrators who were protesting against the US presence. US forces alleged they were fired at first, but Human Rights Watch, who visited the site of the protests, concluded that physical evidence did not corroborate US allegations and confirmed the residents' accusations that the US forces fired indiscriminately at the crowd with no provocation. 17 people were killed and 70 were wounded. In a later incident, US soldiers fired on protesters again; Fallujah's mayor, Taha Bedaiwi al-Alwani, said that two people were killed and 14 wounded. Iraqi insurgents were able to claim the city a year later, before they were ousted by a siege and two assaults by US forces. These events caused widespread destruction and a humanitarian crisis in the city and surrounding areas. As of 2004, the city was largely ruined, with 60% of buildings damaged or destroyed, and the population at 30%–50% of pre-war levels.
The Iraq War, also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a prolonged conflict in Iraq lasting from 2003 to 2011. It began with the invasion by a United States-led coalition, which resulted in the overthrow of the Ba'athist government of Saddam Hussein. The conflict persisted as an insurgency arose against coalition forces and the newly established Iraqi government. US forces were officially withdrawn in 2011. In 2014, the US became re-engaged in Iraq, leading a new coalition under Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, as the conflict evolved into the ongoing insurgency.
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Helvenston et al. v. Blackwater Security was a lawsuit for wrongful death filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina by the families of the four contractors for Blackwater Security killed in the 31 March 2004 Fallujah ambush. The families of the four men, led by Scott Helvenston's mother Katy Helvenston-Wettengel and Donna Zovko, Jerry Zovko's mother, filed suit against Blackwater with lawyer Daniel Callahan on January 5, 2005. Blackwater countersued for $10 million in December 2006, claiming breach of contract provisions that forbade any suit against the company. In January 2011, judge James C. Fox dismissed the suit after no progress was made in court-ordered arbitration.
James Patrick Blecksmith was an American military officer who became the first officer killed during Operation Phantom Fury in Operation Iraqi Freedom II.
The Anbar campaign consisted of fighting between the United States military, together with Iraqi security forces, and Sunni insurgents in the western Iraqi governorate of Al Anbar. The Iraq War lasted from 2003 to 2011, but the majority of the fighting and counterinsurgency campaign in Anbar took place between April 2004 and September 2007. Although the fighting initially featured heavy urban warfare primarily between insurgents and U.S. Marines, insurgents in later years focused on ambushing the American and Iraqi security forces with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), large scale attacks on combat outposts, and car bombings. Almost 9,000 Iraqis and 1,335 Americans were killed in the campaign, many in the Euphrates River Valley and the Sunni Triangle around the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.
The Road to Fallujah is a 2009 American documentary film directed by Mark Manning and written by Manning and Natalie Kalustian.
Ahmad Hashim Abd al-Isawi was an al Qaeda terrorist operating in Iraq in the early 2000s. He allegedly masterminded the ambush and killing of four American military contractors whose bodies were then dragged by a spontaneously formed mob and hung from the old bridge over the Euphrates river in Fallujah, Iraq. In September 2009, a team of U.S. Navy SEALs captured al-Isawi in a nighttime raid in Fallujah, and he was charged with orchestrating the slayings. He was held for a time by the United States intelligence community and accused some of the SEALs who captured him of mistreating him while detained at Camp Schwedler. al-Isawi was subsequently handed over to Iraqi authorities and was awaiting his own trial when he testified at one of the resulting 2010 courts-martial. His own trial was held some time before November 2013, and al-Isawi was executed by hanging for the killings.
The following outline is provided as an overview of, and topical guide to, the Iraq War.
References
- ↑ "Contractors - The High-Risk Contracting Business | Private Warriors | FRONTLINE | PBS". www.pbs.org. Archived from the original on 2012-02-15. Retrieved 2023-05-10.
- ↑ Bing West (2005). No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah . Bantam Books. pp. 3–4. ISBN 978-0-553-80402-7.
- ↑ West xxii. "The Second Phase began in March 2004, when four American contractors were killed and the bodies mutilated in broad daylight in the heart of the city. The US Marines were ordered to seize the city, but then, due to international outrage over televised reportage of the assault, were told to stop. For six weeks the Marines engaged in fierce but inconclusive siege warfare."
- ↑ LeBleu, Joe. "Long Rifle: A Sniper's Story in Iraq and Afghanistan", p. 201. "In mid-April 2003, President Bush decided not to secure Fallujah...laying the groundwork for later U.S. failure there."
- ↑ Scahill, Jeremy. "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army", p. 205. "The horrors unfolding in Fallujah, coupled with the U.S. failure to take control of the city, and the bold resistance of Fallujah's residents was encouraging other Iraqis to rise up."
- ↑ Deignan, Tom (December 22, 2013). "Navy SEALS tragedy in Afghanistan chronicled in new film, "Lone Survivors"". IrishCentral. Archived from the original on January 26, 2017. Retrieved November 28, 2016.
- ↑ CNN Wire Staff (April 22, 2010). "Navy SEAL not guilty of charges in Iraq". CNN . Archived from the original on November 29, 2016. Retrieved November 28, 2016.
- ↑ Hartwell, Ray V. (November 26, 2013). "Persecuting Our Heroes". The American Spectator . Archived from the original on December 20, 2016. Retrieved December 7, 2016.