Talk:Iraq War

Material from 9-11 Attack article

Richard Jensen deleted all this from the 9-11 Attacks article on 26th July 2007, so I'm archiving it here in case any comes in useful (needs work):

Bush went on to identify an "Axis of Evil" — Iraq, Iran and North Korea, citing the existence of their regimes as a threat to long-term global peace, which could not be assured with their capacity and incentive to make weapons of mass destruction. While Iran and North Korea have so far escaped serious intervention, Iraq was quickly identified as a clear and present threat to the rest of the world. However, the United Kingdom was the only country whose government supplied unwavering political and military support to the USA in its plans to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein; many other countries publically supported action, but stopped short of backing an invasion.

The U.S. and U.K governments concocted a number of controversial claims that were later found to be false and deliberately fabricated; however, they did attempt to secure a United Nations resolution permitting military action against Iraq. The authority to invade a country and topple a regime being in violation of international law, the 'Coalition of the Willing' were unable to secure broad support for the attack. America and its new coalition partners demanded that Saddam Hussein resign; when he refused they invaded Iraq and ousted him in March 2003.

The Coalition's invasion and occupation of Iraq, outside international law, led to other potential targets to develop alternative strategies of more constructive engagement with the rest of the world. Pakistan, which had been involved in illegal nuclear weapons proliferation and was the only country to officially recognise the Taliban, became a close ally in the war against al-Qaeda. Libya renounced its own program of building weapons of mass destruction and was welcomed back into the community of nations and the oil market; the regime of Colonel Gaddafi was left untouched, despite its consistent support for terrorism over the years and long record of human rights abuses.

America's willingness to act without the consent of the international community has been seena s deeply troubling for some sections of the global community, especially those whose background has much in common with the Middle East, such as many Muslims. Donald Rumsfeld's characterisation of "Old Europe" - Western European countries such as France and Germany, which opposed the invasion - and "New Europe" - America's former Communist allies in Eastern Europe - also raised hackles.

Needs work

This article badly needs work. --Larry Sanger 08:15, 18 September 2007 (CDT)

Couldn't agree more. I have started some work on this, but this is one big, hot potato. Keeping this NPOV will be nearly impossible, but let's try.

I have rewritten the intro and added a more substantial piece on the weapons inspections in the 1990s. I also deleted some more text about the letter to Clinton by the neoconservatives as it seemed redundant (it doesn't seem as important as to warrant that much text in the article). I'll include the deleted text here:

The Project for a New American Century believed an invasion of Iraq to be necessary in September 2000, long before their supposed complicity in the 9-11 Attack; While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

This article still needs a lot of work, including a lot of fact checking and sourcing. Can't do it alone. Michel van der Hoek 23:07, 7 May 2008 (CDT)