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A dispute exists over the legitimacy of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The debate centers around the question whether the invasion was an unprovoked assault on an independent country that may have breached international law, or if the United Nations Security Council authorized the invasion (whether the conditions set in place after the Gulf War allowed the resumption if Iraq did not uphold to the Security Council resolutions). [1] Those arguing for its legitimacy often point to Congressional Joint Resolution 114 and UN Security Council resolutions, such as Resolution 1441 and Resolution 678. [2] [3] Those arguing against its legitimacy also cite some of the same sources, stating they do not actually permit war but instead lay out conditions that must be met before war can be declared. Furthermore, the Security Council may only authorise the use of force against an "aggressor" [4] in the interests of preserving peace, whereas the 2003 invasion of Iraq was not provoked by any aggressive military action.
There are ongoing debates regarding whether the invasion was launched with the explicit authorization of the United Nations Security Council. The Government of the United States asserts that the invasion was explicitly authorized by Security Council Resolution 678 and thus complies with international law. [5] The Security Council Resolution 678 authorizes UN Member States to "use all necessary means to uphold and implement Resolution 660 and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area", [6] however there exist different interpretations of its meaning. The only legal jurisdiction to find "aggression" or to find the invasion illegal rests with the Security Council under United Nations Charter Articles 39–42. The Security Council met in 2003 for two days, reviewed the legal claims involved, and elected to be "seized of the matter". [7] [8] The Security Council has not reviewed these issues since 2003. The public debate, however, continues. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed his opinion that the invasion of Iraq was "not in conformity with the UN charter [...] from the charter point of view, [the invasion] was illegal." [9] (See Legality of the Iraq War)
While in power, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980 and began the Iran–Iraq War, which lasted until 1988. [10] Iraq's invasion was backed by the United States who funneled over $5 billion to support Saddam's party and sold Iraq hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military equipment. During the war, Hussein used chemical weapons on at least 10 occasions, including attacks against civilians. [11] In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait and began the Persian Gulf War. After the ceasefire agreement was signed between Saddam and the UN in 1991, which suspended the hostilities of the Gulf War, Iraq repeatedly violated 16 different UNSC resolutions from 1990 to 2002. [12] The Iraq Survey Group interviewed regime officials who stated Hussein kept weapon scientists employed and planned to revive Iraq's WMD program after the inspections were lifted, including nuclear weapons. [13] Under UN Resolution 1441, he was given a "final opportunity" to comply, and he again violated the resolution by submitting a false report to UNMOVIC inspectors and continually preventing them from inspecting Iraq's WMD sites. [14] [15]
During the Gulf War, Iraq took foreign civilians hostage on an unprecedented scale. [16] Hussein attempted to use terrorism against the United States during the Gulf War and against former President George H.W. Bush in Kuwait in 1993 for leading the Gulf War against him. [17] He had a long history of supporting fighters in Palestine by giving money to families of suicide bombers [18] and gave refuge to other fighting groups against neighboring states in the region. [19]
In 1988 the Al-Anfal Campaign took place in Iraqi Kurdistan, and was carried out by the cousin of Saddam Hussein, Ali Hassan al-Majid. A document signed by Ali Hassan al-Majid is quoted as stating, "all persons captured in those villages shall be detained and interrogated by the security services and those between the ages of 15 and 70 shall be executed after any useful information has been obtained from them". This target group covered any male of fighting age. In 1991 after the Iraqi forces were expelled from Kuwait, the regime of Saddam Hussein cracked down on uprisings in the Kurdish north and Shia south. It is stated between this time over 40,000 Kurds and 60,000 or more Shi'ites were executed.[ citation needed ]
In 2000, two human rights groups, International Federation of Human Rights Leagues and the Coalition for Justice in Iraq, released a joint report documenting the indoctrination of children into a fighting force. These children as young as five were recruited into the Ashbal Saddam or Saddam's Cubs. The children would be separated from their parents and undergo military training. Parents objecting to this recruitment would be executed and children jailed if they failed to comply. These jails were later noted by Scott Ritter in an interview with Time magazine. [20]
Vice President Cheney stated in 2006 that the U.S. would still have invaded Iraq even if intelligence had shown that there were no weapons of mass destruction. He said Hussein was still dangerous because of his history of using WMD, and taking him out of power "was the right thing to do". [21]
According to Donald Rumsfeld, Saddam Hussein was giving $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers who were aggressive toward Israel. [22]
As part of the 1991 Gulf War ceasefire agreement, the Iraqi government agreed to Security Council Resolution 687, which called for weapons inspectors to search locations in Iraq for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as well as weapons that exceed an effective distance of 150 kilometres. [23] After the passing of resolution 687, thirteen additional resolutions (699, 707, 715, 949, 1051, 1060, 1115, 1134, 1137, 1154, 1194, 1205, 1284) were passed by the Security Council reaffirming the continuation of inspections, or citing Iraq's failure to comply fully with them. [24] On September 9, 1998, the Security Council passed resolution 1194 which unanimously condemns Iraq's suspension of cooperation with UNSCOM, one month later on October 31 Iraq officially declares it will cease all forms of interaction with UNSCOM. [25]
The period between October 31, 1998, and the initiation of Operation Desert Fox (December 16, 1998), contained talks by the Iraqi government with the United Nations Security Council. During these talks Iraq attempted to attach conditions to the work of UNSCOM and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was against previous resolutions calling for unconditional access. The situation was defused after Iraq's Ambassador to the U.N., Nizar Hamdoon, submitted a third letter stating the position of the Iraqi government on October 31 was "void". [26] After weapons inspections resumed, UNSCOM requested arms documents related to weapon usage and destruction during the Iran–Iraq War. The Iraqi government rejected this request because it was handwritten and did not fall within the scope of the UN mandate. The UN inspectors insisted in order to know if Iraq destroyed all of its weapons, it had to know "the total holdings of Iraq's chemical weapons." [27] Further incidents erupted as Iraqi officials demanded "lists of things and materials" being searched for during surprise inspections. [28]
On December 16, 1998, U.S. President Bill Clinton initiated Operation Desert Fox based on Iraq's failure to fully comply with the inspectors. Clinton noted the announcement made by the Iraqi government on October 31, stating they would no longer cooperate with UNSCOM. Also noted was the numerous efforts to hinder UNSCOM officials, including prevention of photographing evidence and photocopying documents, as well as prevention of interviewing Iraqi personnel. [29] [25]
Inspection teams were withdrawn before the Operation Desert Fox bombing campaign and did not return for four years. The United Nations no-fly zone enforced by the United States, United Kingdom and France—also legality disputed—became a location of constant exchange of fire since Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan instructed Iraqi military to attack all planes in the no-fly zone. [31]
A memo written by US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld dated Nov 27, 2001 considers a US invasion of Iraq. One section of the memo questions "How start?", listing multiple possible justifications for a US-Iraq War, one scenario being "Dispute over WMD inspections—Start thinking now about inspection demands" [30] In late 2002, after international pressure and more UN Resolutions, Iraq allowed inspection teams back into the country. In 2003, UNMOVIC was inspecting Iraq but were ordered out. [32] [33] There is no credible evidence of WMD production (see Duelfer Report) and no WMDs have been found to date after 1991 (See below and WMD in Iraq). George W. Bush has since admitted that "much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong". [34]
The United States offered intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency and British MI5 to the United Nations Security Council suggesting that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. claimed that justification rested upon Iraq's violation of several U.N. Resolutions, most recently UN Security Council Resolution 1441. [35] U.S. president George W. Bush claimed Iraq's WMDs posed a significant threat to the United States and its allies. [36] [37] An inspection team UNMOVIC, before completing its UN-mandate or completing its report was ordered out by the UN because the US-led invasion appeared imminent.
In the past, Iraq had been supplied with chemical weapons and the technology to develop them by Germany, France, United States and the United Kingdom. [38] Saddam used these weapons against Iranian forces in the Iran–Iraq War, and against Kurdish civilians in the Iraqi town of Halabja. In 1990 during the Gulf War Saddam had the opportunity to use these weapons, but chose not to. One of the noted reasons is the Iraqi forces' lack of up to date equipment to protect themselves from the effects, as well as the speed with which the US forces traversed the open desert. [39] From 1991 to 1998 UNSCOM inspected Iraq and worked to locate and destroy WMD stockpiles. The team was replaced in 1999 with the United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission, UNMOVIC.
In 2002, Scott Ritter, a former UNSCOM weapons inspector, heavily criticized the Bush administration and the news media for relying on the testimony of alleged Iraqi nuclear scientist and defector Khidir Hamza as a rationale for invading Iraq.
We seized the entire records of the Iraqi Nuclear program, especially the administrative records. We got a name of everybody, where they worked, what they did, and the top of the list, Saddam's "Bombmaker” [Which was the title of Hamza's book, and earned the nickname afterwards] was a man named Jafar Dhia Jafar, not Khidir Hamza, and if you go down the list of the senior administrative personnel you will not find Hamza's name in there. In fact, we didn't find his name at all, because in 1990 he didn't work for the Iraqi Nuclear Program. He had no knowledge of it because he worked as a kickback specialist for Hussein Kamel in the Presidential Palace.
He goes into northern Iraq and meets up with Ahmad Chalabi. He walks in and says, I'm Saddam's ‘Bombmaker’. So they call the CIA and they say, "we know who you are, you're not Saddam's ‘Bombmaker’, go sell your story to someone else." And he was released, he was rejected by all intelligence services at the time, he's a fraud.
And here we are, someone who the CIA knows is a fraud, the US Government knows is a fraud, is allowed to sit in front of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and give testimony as an expert witness. I got a problem with that, I got a problem with the American media, and I've told them over and over and over again that this man is a documentable fraud, a fake, and yet they allow him to go on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and testify as if he actually knows what he is talking about. [40]
No militarily significant WMDs have been found in Iraq since the invasion, although several degraded chemical munitions dating to before 1991 have been. On June 21, 2006, a report was released through the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, stating that since 2003, approximately 500 degraded chemical munitions have been discovered dating from before 1991 in Iraq, and "likely more will be recovered." [41] The weapons are filled "most likely" with Sarin and Mustard Gas. [42] However, the U.S. Department of Defense states that these weapons were not in usable condition, and that "these are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war." [41]
In January 2006, The New York Times reported that "A high-level intelligence assessment by the Bush administration concluded in early 2002 that the sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq was 'unlikely.'" [43] The Iraqi government denied the existence of any such facilities or capabilities and called the reports lies and fabrications, which was backed by the post-war prima facie case that no WMDs were evident or found.
Former CIA officials have stated that the White House knew before the invasion that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, but had decided to attack Iraq and continue to use the WMD story as a false pretext for launching the war. [44] The leaked Downing Street Memo, an internal summary of a meeting between British defense and intelligence officials, states that Bush Administration had decided to attack Iraq and to "fix intelligence" to support the WMD pretext to justify it. A transcript of a secret conversation between President Bush and PM Blair leaked by a government whistleblower reveals that the US and UK were prepared to invade Iraq even if no WMD were found. [45] British officials in the memo also discuss a proposal by President Bush to provoke Iraq, including using fake UN planes, to manufacture a pretext for the invasion he had already decided on. [45] Best evidence of that false intelligence has been Niger uranium story because on March 14, 2003 (before the invasion) it became public knowledge that president Tandja Mamadou's signatory had been forged. [46]
In 2004 the Butler Commission Report concluded that, "on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time," statements by the British Government "on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa" were "well-founded." Opponents however consider the Butler Review a whitewash which lacked cross-party support (the panel was appointed by, and reported directly to, the Prime Minister). [47]
The Iraq Intelligence Commission rejected claims that the Bush administration attempted to influence the intelligence community's pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs, but it did not investigate whether the administration misled the public about the intelligence. [48]
The Commission found no evidence of political pressure to influence the Intelligence Community's pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. As we discuss in detail in the body of our report, analysts universally asserted that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments. [49]
Paul R. Pillar, a 28-year veteran of the CIA, wrote in Foreign Affairs that "the method of investigation used by [these] panels—essentially, asking analysts whether their arms had been twisted—would have caught only the crudest attempts at politicization:
The actual politicization of intelligence occurs subtly and can take many forms. … Well before March 2003, intelligence analysts and their managers knew that the United States was heading for war with Iraq. It was clear that the Bush administration would frown on or ignore analysis that called into question a decision to go to war and welcome analysis that supported such a decision. Intelligence analysts … felt a strong wind consistently blowing in one direction. [50]
Pillar holds that intelligence was "misused to justify decisions already made". [51]
Regime documents captured inside Iraq by coalition forces are reported to reveal Saddam's frustration with weapon inspections. Meeting transcripts record him saying to senior aides: "We don't have anything hidden!" He questions whether inspectors would "roam Iraq for 50 years". "When is this going to end?" he remarks. He tells his deputies in another: "Don't think for a minute that we still have WMD. We have nothing." [52]
Former General Georges Sada maintains the Iraqi leadership ordered the removal of WMD from Iraq to Syria before the 2003 invasion, in spite of the findings by the Iraq Survey Group. Sada left Iraq in 1991, precluding him from having any first-hand knowledge of any such action, and he has provided no evidence to substantiate his claims. The final report on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, issued by Charles Duelfer, concluded in April 2005 that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction had "gone as far as feasible" and found nothing. However, Duelfer reported though that the search for WMD material turned up nothing that his team was "unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials" [53] [ failed verification ]
Support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq included 49 nations, a group that was frequently referred to as the "coalition of the willing". These nations provided combat troops, support troops, and logistical support for the invasion. The nations contributing combat forces during the initial invasion were, roughly:
Total 297,384 – 99% US & UK
The United States (250,000 84%), the United Kingdom (45,000 15%), Australia (2,000 0.6%), Denmark (200 0.06%), and Poland (184 0.06%), these totals do not include the 50,000+ Iraqi Kurdish soldiers that assisted the coalition. Ten other countries offered small numbers of non-combat forces, mostly either medical teams and specialists in decontamination. In several of these countries a majority of the public was opposed to the war. For example, in Spain polls reported at one time a 90% opposition to the war. In most other countries less than 10% of the populace supported an invasion of Iraq without a specific go-ahead from the UN. [54] According to a mid-January 2003 telephone poll, approximately one-third of the U.S. population supported a unilateral invasion by the US and its allies, while two-thirds supported war if directly authorized by the U.N. [55] [56]
Global protests expressed opposition to the invasion. In many Middle Eastern and Islamic countries there were mass protests, as well as in Europe. On the government level, the war was criticized by Canada, Belgium, Chile, Russia, France, the People's Republic of China, Germany, Switzerland, the Vatican, India, Iraq, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Brazil, Mexico, the Arab League, the African Union and many others. Though many nations opposed the war, no foreign government openly supported Saddam Hussein, and none volunteered any assistance to the Iraqi side. Leading traditional allies of the U.S. who had supported Security Council Resolution 1441, France, Germany and Russia, emerged as a united front opposed to the U.S.-led invasion, urging that the UN weapons inspectors be given time to complete their work.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud said the U.S. military could not use Saudi Arabia's soil in any way to attack Iraq. [57] After ten years of U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia, cited among reasons by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden for his al-Qaeda attacks on America on September 11, 2001, most of U.S. forces were withdrawn in 2003. [58]
The legality of the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been debated, with an overwhelming majority of the world's population considering the invasion illegal.
The then United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in September 2004 that: "From our point of view and the UN Charter point of view, it [the war] was illegal." [59] [60]
The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court reported in February 2006 that he had received 240 communications in connection with the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 which alleged that various war crimes had been committed.
The political leaders of the US and UK at the time argued that the war was legal, and that existing UN Security Council resolutions related to the first Persian Gulf War and the subsequent ceasefire (660, 678), and to later inspections of Iraqi weapons programs (1441), had already authorized the invasion. [61] Critics of the invasion have challenged both of these assertions, arguing that an additional Security Council resolution, which the US and UK failed to obtain, would have been necessary to specifically authorize the invasion. [59] [62] [63]
The Iraq Inquiry in the UK later found that the legal basis for the law was questionable.
The UN Security Council, as outlined in Article 39 of the UN Charter, theoretically has the ability to rule on the legality of the war, but the US and the UK have veto power in the Security Council, so action is highly improbable even if the issue were to be raised. Despite this, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) may ask that the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—"the principal judicial organ of the United Nations" (Article 92)—give either an 'advisory opinion' or 'judgement' on the legality of the war. Indeed, the UNGA asked the ICJ to give an 'advisory opinion' on "the legal consequences arising from the construction of the wall being built by Israel", by its resolution A/RES/ES-10/14, [64] as recently as 12 December 2003; despite opposition from permanent members of the Security Council. It achieved this by sitting in tenth 'emergency special session', under the framework of the 'Uniting for Peace' resolution. The ICJ had previously found against the US for its actions in Nicaragua, a finding the US refused to comply with.
Those who opposed the war in Iraq did not regard Iraq's violation of UN resolutions to be a valid case for the war, since no single nation has the authority, under the UN Charter, to judge Iraq's compliance to UN resolutions and to enforce them. Furthermore, critics argued that the US was applying double standards of justice, noting that other nations such as Israel are also in breach of UN resolutions and have nuclear weapons. [65]
Giorgio Agamben, the Italian philosopher, has offered a critique of the logic of preemptive war.
Although Iraq was known to have pursued an active nuclear weapons development program previously, as well as to have tried to procure materials and equipment for their manufacture, these weapons and material have yet to be discovered. President Bush's reference to Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium in Africa in his 2003 State of the Union address are by now commonly considered as having been based on forged documents (see Yellowcake forgery).
Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for The Independent , comments in his book The Great War for Civilisation that history is repeating itself. Fisk, in the Dutch TV news program Nova: "It is not just similar, it is 'fingerprint' the same". In 1917, the UK invaded Iraq, claiming to come "not as conquerors but as liberators". After an insurrection in 1920, "the first town that was bombed was Fallujah and the next town that was laid siege to was Najaf". Then, the British army intelligence services claimed that terrorists were crossing the border from Syria. Prime minister Lloyd George stood up in the house of commons and declared that "if British troops leave Iraq there will be civil war". The British were going to set up a democracy in Iraq. In a referendum, however, a king was 'elected'. "They decided they would no longer use troops on the ground, it was too dangerous, they would use the Royal Air force to bomb villages from the air. And eventually, [...] we left and our leaders were overthrown and the Ba'ath party, which was a revolutionary socialist party at the time—Saddam Hussein—took over. And I'm afraid that the Iraq we are creating now is an Iraq of anarchy and chaos. And as long as we stay there, the chaos will get worse."
Pope John Paul II spoke out against the war several times, and said that a war against Iraq would be a "disaster" and a "crime against peace." During the buildup to the war, one hundred Christian scholars of ethical theory issued a statement condemning the war as morally unjustifiable. Their brief statement, which was published in the Sept. 23 edition of the [Chronicle of Higher Education], read as follows: "As Christian Ethicists, we share a common moral presumption against a preemptive war on Iraq by the United States." The group included scholars from a wide array of universities, including traditionally left-leaning Ivy League schools as well as more conservative institutions such as Lipscomb University, in Nashville, Lubbock Christian University, in Lubbock, Tex. (both affiliated with the Churches of Christ), and the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. [66] Other scholars of the just war theory asserted that war with Iraq could be justified on the grounds of defense of a "helpless other." This position is based on the position that war could be justified on the grounds of liberating a helpless people being victimized by a tyrannical ruler. [67]
The Iraq disarmament crisis was claimed as one of the primary issues that led to the multinational invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003.
The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) was created through the adoption of United Nations Security Council resolution 1284 of 17 December 1999 and its mission lasted until June 2007.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 is a United Nations Security Council resolution adopted unanimously by the United Nations Security Council on 8 November 2002, offering Iraq under Saddam Hussein "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations" that had been set out in several previous resolutions. It provided a legal justification for the subsequent US-led invasion of Iraq.
Hans Martin Blix is a Swedish diplomat and politician for the Liberal People's Party. He was Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs (1978–1979) and later became the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. As such, Blix was the first Western representative to inspect the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union on-site and led the agency's response to them. Blix was also the head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission from March 2000 to June 2003, when he was succeeded by Dimitris Perrikos. In 2002, the commission began searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, ultimately finding none. On 17 March 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush delivered an address from the White House announcing that within 48 hours, the United States would invade Iraq unless Saddam Hussein would leave. Bush then ordered all of the weapons inspectors, including Blix's team, to leave Iraq so that America and its allies could invade Iraq on 20 March. In February 2010, Blix became head of the United Arab Emirates' advisory board for its nuclear power program. He is the former president of the World Federation of United Nations Associations.
Iraq actively researched and later employed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from 1962 to 1991, when it destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile and halted its biological and nuclear weapon programs as required by the United Nations Security Council. The fifth president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was internationally condemned for his use of chemical weapons against Iranian and Kurdish civilians during the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s. Saddam pursued an extensive biological weapons program and a nuclear weapons program, though no nuclear bomb was built. After the Gulf War, the United Nations located and destroyed large quantities of Iraqi chemical weapons and related equipment and materials; Iraq ceased its chemical, biological and nuclear programs.
United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) was an inspection regime created by the United Nations to ensure Iraq's compliance with policies concerning Iraqi production and use of weapons of mass destruction after the Gulf War. Between 1991 and 1997 its director was Rolf Ekéus; from 1997 to 1999 its director was Richard Butler.
This article describes the positions of world governments before the actual initiation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and not their current positions as they may have changed since then.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion began on 20 March 2003 and lasted just over one month, including 26 days of major combat operations, in which a United States-led combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded the Republic of Iraq. Twenty-two days after the first day of the invasion, the capital city of Baghdad was captured by coalition forces on 9 April after the six-day-long Battle of Baghdad. This early stage of the war formally ended on 1 May when U.S. President George W. Bush declared the "end of major combat operations" in his Mission Accomplished speech, after which the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was established as the first of several successive transitional governments leading up to the first Iraqi parliamentary election in January 2005. U.S. military forces later remained in Iraq until the withdrawal in 2011.
The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) was a fact-finding mission sent by the multinational force in Iraq to find the weapons of mass destruction alleged to be possessed by Iraq that had been the main ostensible reason for the invasion in 2003. Its final report, Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq WMD, was submitted to Congress and the president in 2004. It consisted of a 1,400-member international team organized by the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency to hunt for the alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological agents, and any supporting research programs and infrastructure that could be used to develop WMD. The report acknowledged that only small stockpiles of chemical WMDs were found, the numbers being inadequate to pose a militarily significant threat.
William Scott Ritter Jr. is an American former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer, former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector, author, and commentator. Ritter is a convicted child sex offender.
Colonel General Hussein Kamel Hassan al-Majid was the son-in-law and first cousin once removed of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. He defected to Jordan and assisted United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection teams assigned to look for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He was killed the following year for betraying Saddam.
The following lists events in the year 2003 in Iraq.
Events in the year 2002 in Iraq.
There are various rationales for the Iraq War that have been used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent hostilities.
The 2003 United States–British–Spanish Draft Resolution on Iraq was, according to Ambassador John Negroponte, "a resolution to have the Council decide that Iraq is not complying, is out of compliance, with Resolution 1441". Initially introduced on February 24, 2003, and amended on March 7, 2003, the draft set a March 17 deadline for Iraq to demonstrate "full, unconditional, immediate and active cooperation in accordance with its disarmament obligations." The draft was based on information from the Iraqi defector "Curveball," who claimed Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, which Curveball later admitted was untrue. The widely discussed UN resolution was not brought up for formal vote after it became clear that it would not have passed due to opposition from France, Russia, and China. The United States invaded Iraq without UN support on March 20, 2003, initiating the Iraq War.
The legality of the Iraq War is a contested topic that spans both domestic and international law. Political leaders in the US and the UK who supported the invasion of Iraq have claimed that the war was legal. However, legal experts and other world leaders have argued that the war lacked justification and violated the United Nations charter.
Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) began an extensive biological weapons (BW) program in Iraq in the early 1980s, despite having signed the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1972. Details of the BW program and a chemical weapons program surfaced after the Gulf War (1990–91) during the disarmament of Iraq under the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM). By the end of the war, program scientists had investigated the BW potential of five bacterial strains, one fungal strain, five types of virus, and four toxins. Of these, three—anthrax, botulinum and aflatoxin—had proceeded to weaponization for deployment. Because of the UN disarmament program that followed the war, more is known today about the once-secret bioweapons program in Iraq than that of any other nation.
Prior to the Iraq War, the United States accused Iraq of developing weapons of mass destruction and having links with al-Qaeda. In 1991, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 was adopted and subsequent UN weapons inspectors were inside Iraq. This period also saw low-level hostilities between Iraq and the United States-led coalition from 1991–2003.
Rihab Rashid Taha al-Azawi is an Iraqi microbiologist, dubbed Dr Germ by United Nations weapons inspectors, who worked in Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program. A 1999 report commissioned by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) named her as one of the world's most dangerous women. Dr Taha admitted producing germ warfare agents but said they had been destroyed.
He sought to balance the need to cooperate with UN inspections—to gain support for lifting sanctions—with his intention to preserve Iraq's intellectual capital for WMD with a minimum of foreign intrusiveness and loss of face. … Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991—after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.
During the period 1991–1998, Iraq submitted many declarations called full, final and complete. Regrettably, much in these declarations proved inaccurate or incomplete or was unsupported or contradicted by evidence. In such cases, no confidence can arise that proscribed programmes or items have been eliminated. … The overall impression is that not much new significant information has been provided in the part of Iraq's Declaration, which relates to proscribed weapons programmes, nor has much new supporting documentation or other evidence been submitted.
He'd done it before,' Cheney said. 'He had produced chemical weapons before and used them. He had produced biological weapons. He had a robust nuclear program in '91.' The U.S. invasion 'was the right thing to do, and if we had to do it again, we would do exactly the same thing,' he said.
The plant was sold and installed by a British company in Hounslow, Uhde Ltd.