The Iraqi National Congress is an Iraqi political party that was led by Ahmed Chalabi who died in 2015. It was formed as an umbrella opposition group with the aid and direction of the United States government following the Gulf War, for the purpose of fomenting the overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
The history of Iraq from 2003 to 2011 is characterized by a large United States military deployment on Iraqi territory, beginning with the U.S.-led invasion of the country in March 2003 which overthrew the Ba'ath Party government of Saddam Hussein and ending with the departure of US troops from the country in 2011. Troops for the invasion came primarily from the United States, the United Kingdom and Poland, but 29 other nations also provided some troops, and there were varying levels of assistance from Japan and other countries.
Ayad Allawi is an Iraqi politician. He served as Vice President of Iraq from 2014 to 2015, interim Prime Minister of Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and was the President of the Governing Council of Iraq in 2003. He became Vice President again, in October 2016.
Iraqi sovereignty was interrupted by the multinational forces which overthrew Saddam Hussein in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI) is one of a number of underground Islamist militant organizations formed in Iraq following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by United States and coalition military forces, and the subsequent collapse of the Baathist government headed by Saddam Hussein.
Parliamentary elections were held in Iraq on 30 January 2005 to elect the new National Assembly, alongside governorate elections and a parliamentary election in Iraqi Kurdistan. The 275-member legislature had been created under the Transitional Law during the international occupation. The newly elected body was given a mandate to write a new constitution and exercise legislative functions until the new constitution came into effect. The elections also led to the formation of the Iraqi Transitional Government.
The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) is the largest union federation in Iraq and the only officially recognized trade union body. It was formed in the aftermath of the Iraq War by several groups, most prominently the Iraqi Communist Party, which wished to disassociate itself from the National Front it had formed with the Ba'ath Party in the 1970s.
The Constitution of Iraq is the fundamental law of Iraq. The first constitution came into force in 1925. The current constitution was drafted and approved in 2005.
The 1920 Revolution Brigades is a Sunni militia group in Iraq, which includes former members of the disbanded Iraqi army. The group has used improvised explosive devices, and armed attacks against U.S. occupation forces. The group comprises the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement. The group is named in reference to the 1920 Iraqi revolt against the British.
2nd Battalion, 8th Marines (2/8) is an infantry battalion in the United States Marine Corps based out of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina consisting of approximately 900 Marines and Sailors. Nicknamed "America's Battalion," they fall under the 8th Marine Regiment and the 2nd Marine Division.
The Iraq War was a protracted armed conflict that began in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition that overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein. The conflict continued for much of the next decade as an insurgency emerged to oppose the occupying forces and the post-invasion Iraqi government. An estimated 151,000 to 600,000 or more Iraqis were killed in the first three to four years of conflict. In 2009, official US troops were withdrawn, but American soldiers continued to remain on the ground fighting in Iraq, hired by defence contractors and private military companies. The U.S. became re-involved in 2014 at the head of a new coalition; the insurgency and many dimensions of the civil armed conflict continue. The invasion occurred as part of a declared war against international terrorism and its sponsors under the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush following the unrelated September 11 terrorist attacks.
Jon Soltz served as a United States Army officer in the Iraq War and is chairman and co-founder of the 220,000 member VoteVets.org. In 2011, he took a one-year leave of absence from VoteVets, while deployed as part of Operation New Dawn in Iraq. Also, as a member of the U.S. Army, he served in both the Kosovo campaign in 2000 and later in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Soltz was an outspoken critic of Operation Iraqi Freedom and its execution.
VoteVets.org is a political action committee (PAC) and 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization in the United States. It was co-founded in 2006 by Jon Soltz and Jeremy Broussard.
Founded late in 2001, the American Islamic Congress (AIC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in the United States. AIC is a non-religious, civil rights organization whose stated goal is to build interfaith and inter-ethnic understanding. It receives significant funding from the U.S. government.
Yanar Mohammed is a prominent Iraqi feminist who was born in Baghdad. She is a co-founder and the director of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, and serves as the editor of the newspaper Al-Mousawat (Equality). She received the Gruber Prize for Women's Rights in 2008 and Norway's Rafto Prize in 2016.
The War on Terror, also known as the Global War on Terrorism, is an international military campaign that was launched by the United States government after the September 11 attacks against the United States. The naming of the campaign uses a metaphor of war to refer to a variety of actions that do not constitute a specific war as traditionally defined. U.S. president George W. Bush first used the term "war on terrorism" on 16 September 2001, and then "war on terror" a few days later in a formal speech to Congress. In the latter speech, George Bush stated, "Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them." The term was originally used with a particular focus on countries associated with al-Qaeda. The term was immediately criticised by such people as Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and more nuanced terms subsequently came to be used by the Bush administration to publicly define the international campaign led by the U.S.; it was never used as a formal designation of U.S. operations in internal government documentation.
The MoveOn.org ad controversy began when the U.S. anti-war liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org published a full-page ad in The New York Times on September 10, 2007, accusing General David H. Petraeus of "cooking the books for the White House". The ad also labeled him "General Betray Us". The organization created the ad in response to Petraeus' Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq. MoveOn hosted pages on its website about the ad and their reasons behind it from 2007 to June 23, 2010. On June 23, 2010, after President Obama nominated General Petraeus to be the new top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, MoveOn erased these webpages and any reference to them from its website.
The Iraqi National Foundation Congress (INFC) is a civil society movement in Iraq. It was set up following the 2003 invasion of Iraq to offer a peaceful protest to the ongoing occupation of the country and press for a united Iraq, and explicitly eschews violence in its methodology.
De-Ba'athification refers to a policy undertaken in Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and subsequent Iraqi governments to remove the Ba'ath Party's influence in the new Iraqi political system. It was considered by the Coalition Provisional Authority to be Iraq's equivalent to Germany's Denazification after World War II. It was first outlined in CPA Order 1 which entered into force on 16 May 2003. The order declared that all public sector employees affiliated with the Ba'ath Party were to be removed from their positions and to be banned from any future employment in the public sector. The policy was highly controversial among US academics, institutions, government, military, and international media and debate outlets. The policy under the Coalition Provisional Authority was officially rescinded on 28 June 2004 as part of the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi Interim Government on 30 June 2004. However, elements of the policy continued under the Iraqi Governing Council and later under the elected Iraqi Parliament. Proponents of the policy contend that the policy effectively cleansed Iraqi society of Ba'athist influence, facilitating the creation of a democratic Iraqi government. Critics argue that the policy was not only undemocratic, but also a significant factor in the deteriorating security situation throughout Iraq.
The status of women in Iraq at the beginning of the 21st century is affected by many factors: wars, sectarian religious conflict, debates concerning Islamic law and Iraq's Constitution, cultural traditions, and modern secularism. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women are widowed as a result of a series of wars and internal conflicts. Women's rights organizations struggle against harassment and intimidation, while they work to promote improvements to women's status in the law, in education, the workplace, and many other spheres of Iraqi life, and to curtail abusive traditional practices such as honor killings and forced marriages.
