War in Iraq and What Lead Up to it
The War in Iraq
Since the end of the Gulf War of 1991, Iraq's relations with the United States remained poor. In the absence of a Security Council agreement that Iraq had fully complied with the terms of the Persian Gulf War ceasefire, both the United Nations and the United States enforced numerous economic sanctions against Iraq throughout the Clinton administration, and the United States and the United Kingdom patrolled Iraqi airspace to enforce Iraqi no-fly zones that they had declared. The United States Congress also passed the "Iraq Liberation Act" in October 1998, which provided $97 million for Iraqi in order to establish a program to support a transition to democracy in Iraq. This differed with the terms set out by the United Nations, which related to weapons and weapons programs, but made no mention of regime change. Weapons inspectors had been used to gather information on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program and to enforce the terms of the 1991 cease fire, which outlawed Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction. The information gathered by the inspectors was used in targeting decisions during Operation Desert Fox, a United States and United Kingdom bombardment of Iraq in December 1998 which was supposedly hurried by lack of cooperation between Iraq and the United Nations weapon inspections team.
On October 11, 2002, the United States Congress passed the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002", giving President George W. Bush the authority to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein did not give up his weapons of mass destruction. On November 9, 2002, the United Nations Security Council passed United Nations Security Council Resolution, offering Iraq "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations" that had been set out in several previous resolutions notably to provide "an accurate full, final, and complete disclosure of all aspects of its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles". Resolution 1441 threatened "serious consequences" if the Iraqis didn’t met the demands that United Nations gave them to disarm themselves of these weapons. On February 15, 2003, as a response to the imminent invasion, the largest ever world-wide protests took place with 6-10 million people in over 60 countries around the world. In his March 17, 2003, address to the nation, President George W. Bush demanded that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his two sons Uday and Qusay leave Iraq, giving...