Jump to content

2003 invasion of Iraq

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Get-back-world-respect (talk | contribs) at 23:52, 31 March 2004 (see talk; journalists includes newspaper editors). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:TotallyDisputed

The 2003 invasion of Iraq began on March 20, 2003, when forces belonging primarily to the United States and the United Kingdom invaded Iraq. After approximately three weeks of fighting, Iraq's Ba'athist government was toppled and a U.S.-led occupation of Iraq began. Ground forces from Australia and Poland and naval forces from Denmark and Spain also took part. The international community was divided on the legitimacy of this invasion; see worldwide government positions on war on Iraq.

The start of hostilities came after the expiration of a 48-hour deadline which was set by U.S. President George W. Bush, demanding that Saddam Hussein and his two sons Uday and Qusay leave Iraq, ending the diplomatic Iraq disarmament crisis.

The US military operations in this war were conducted under the name of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The UK military operations in this war were conducted under the name of Operation Telic. The Australian codename was Operation Falconer.

250,000 United States troops, with support from approximately 45,000 British, 2,000 Australian and 200 Polish combat forces, entered Iraq primarily through their staging area in Kuwait. Plans for a invasion force from the north were abandoned when Turkey refused the use of their territory for such purposes. Coalition forces also supported Iraqi Kurdish militia troops, estimated to number upwards of 50,000. Included in these forces were groups of Australian SAS and Commando Personnel who performed Recon and combat search and rescue mission along side American and British SF units.

Timeline of the invasion

See 2003 invasion of Iraq timeline for a detailed timeline

The invasion was swift, with the collapse of the Iraq government and the military of Iraq in about three weeks. The oil infrastructure of Iraq was rapidly secured with limited damage in that time. Securing the oil infrastructure was considered important in order to prevent Saddam Hussein's forces from destroying it (as happened in 1991, creating environmental and economic problems).

Casualties of the invading forces were limited, while Iraqi military and civilian casualties are unknown, probably at least in the thousands. A study from the Project on Defense Alternatives [1], a Boston-based think tank, numbered the Iraqi casualities between 11,000 and 15,000 ( PDF file ), and the Iraq Body Count project numbered the civilian Iraqis injured in 20,000 [2]. However, the Iraq Body Count projects numbers have been the subject of much debate, and may or may not be overly pessimistic.

The U.S. Third Division moved westward and then northward through the desert toward Baghdad, while the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and a UK expeditionary force moved northward through marshland. UK forces secured Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, following two weeks of conflict, although their control of the city was limited. Preexisting electrical and water shortages continued through the conflict and looting began as Iraqi forces collapsed. While British forces began working with local Iraqi Police to enforce order, humanitarian aid began to arrive from ships landing in the port city of Umm Qasr and trucks entering the country through Kuwait.

Three weeks into the invasion U.S. forces moved into Baghdad with limited resistance, Iraqi government officials either disappeared or conceded defeat. On April 9, 2003 Baghdad was formally secured by US forces and the regime of Saddam Hussein was declared to be ended. Saddam had previously vanished, and his whereabouts were unknown. Many Iraqis celebrated the downfall of Saddam by vanadizling his may portraits, stautes, and other pieces of his personality cult. A large statute of Saddam in central Baghdad was dramatically toppled by a US tank. This event has been hotly disputed [3], with some pointing out that the flag placed over the face was one flown over the Pentagon on September 11th appeared indicative of a staged event [4], and one picture from the event was discovered to have been doctored to make the crowd appear larger [5].

General Tommy Franks assumed control of Iraq as Supreme commander of occupation forces.

Shortly after the sudden collapse of the defense of Baghdad, rumors were circulating in Iraq and elsewhere that there had been a deal struck (a "safqua") wherein the US had bribed key members of the Iraqi military elite and/or the Baath party itself to stand down.

In late May, 2003, Tommy Franks announced his retirement. Shortly thereafter, he confirmed in an interview with Defense Week that the US had paid Iraqi military leaders to defect. The extent of the defections and their effect on the war were not clear as of this writing (May 24, 2003).

Looting took place in the days following. It was alleged that many items in the National Museum of Iraq were amongst looted items. The F.B.I. was soon called into Iraq to track down the stolen items. It was found that the initial claims of looting of substantial portions of the collection were somewhat exaggerated and for months people have been returning objects to the museum. Yet, as some of the dust has settled, thousands of antiquities are still missing including dozens from the main collection.

There has been speculation that some objects still missing were not taken by looters after the war, but were taken by Saddam Hussein or his entourage before or during the fighting. There have also been reports that early looters had keys to vaults that held rarer pieces, and some have speculated as to the systematic removal of key artifacts.

File:Afghaq.jpg Image of civilian victim Ali Abbas, 12. A U.S. missile obliterated his home and most of his family, leaving him an orphan without arms. April 2003, Baghdad neighborhood. A picture of him became one of 2003's world press photos.

Many in the arts and antiquities communities warned policymakers in advance of the need to secure Iraqi museums. Despite the looting being somewhat less bad than initially feared, the cultural loss of items from ancient Sumeria is significant. The idea that US forces did not guard the museum because they were guarding the Ministry of Oil and Ministry of Interior is apparently true. According to U.S. officials the "reality of the situation on the ground" was that hospitals, water plants, and ministries with vital intelligence needed security more than other sites. There were only enough US troops on the ground to guard a certain number of the many sites that ideally needed protection, and so some "hard choices" were made.

In the north Kurdish forces under the command of U.S. Special Forces captured oil-rich Kirkuk on April 10. On April 15, U.S. forces mostly took control of Tikrit.

As areas were secured, coalition troops began searching for the key members of Saddam Hussein's regime. These individuals were identified by a variety of means, most famously through sets of most-wanted Iraqi playing cards.

File:Saddamstatue.jpg
A giant statue of Saddam is toppled in Baghdad after US forces take control of the capitol.

On May 1, 2003 George W. Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, in a Lockheed S-3 Viking, where he gave a speech announcing end of major combat in the Iraq war. Clearly visible in the background was a banner stating "Mission Accomplished". Bush's landing was criticized by opponents as overly theatrical and expensive. The banner, made by White House personnel (according to a CNN story [6] and placed there by the U.S. Navy, was criticized as premature - especially later as the guerrilla war dragged on.

It was soon found that "major combat" being over did not mean that peace had returned to Iraq. The U.S.-led occupation of Iraq thereupon commenced, marked by ongoing violent conflict between the Iraqi resistance and the occupying forces. As of March 5, 2004, the total deaths of American soldiers in the Iraq war since March have reached over 500. Of these the majority has been killed after the end of major hostilities on May 1. There is concern being voiced from some in the domestic quarters comparing the situation to previous wars such as the Vietnam War.

The ongoing resistance in Iraq is concentrated in, but not limited to, an area known as the Sunni triangle and Baghdad [7]. Critics point out that the regions where violence is most common are also the most populated regions. This resistance may be described as guerilla warfare. The tactics used thus far include mortars, suicide bombers, roadside bombs, small arms fire, and RPGs, as well as purported sabotage against the oil infrastructure. There are also accusations about attacks toward the power and water infrastructure, but these are rather questionable in nature. In the only widely covered example of what some considered an attack on the power system, two US soldiers were killed, indicating that they may instead have been the target. In the purported attack against a water main, some witnesses reported seeing an explosion on the pipe, but US soldiers and repair crews on the scene stated that it did not appear to have been caused by an explosion.

There is evidence that some of the resistance is organized, perhaps by the fedayeen and other Saddam Hussein or Baath loyalists, religious radicals, Iraqis simply angered over the occupation, and foreign fighters. [8]

After the war, information began to emerge about several failed Iraqi peace initiatives, including ofters as extensive as allowing 5,000 FBI agents in to search the country for weapons of mass destruction, support for the US-backed Roadmap For Peace, and the abdication of Saddam Hussein to be replaced under UN elections.

Events leading to the invasion

Since the end of the Gulf War of 1992, relations between the United States and Iraq remained poor. Hopes that Saddam Hussein's government would be overthrown from within had never come to pass, and fears that he was developing weapons of mass destruction in violation of UN Sanctions remained. In 1998 the United States Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act which stated "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq." However, during the Bill Clinton administration, little was done to achieve this, aside from keeping a set of increasingly unpopular economic sanctions in place against Iraq.

File:Saddam Hussein (107).jpg
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein

In September 2000, in the Rebuilding America's Defenses report [9], the conservative Project for the New American Century thinktank advocated that the United States take a stronger military position against the regime of Saddam Hussein. Upon the election of George W. Bush as president, many hawkish advocates of such a policy (including some of those who wrote the 2000 report) were included in the new administration's foreign policy circle. According to former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, the attack was planned since the inauguration, and the first security council meeting discussed plans on invasion of the country. One year later, on the day of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is reported to have written in his notes, "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]". Shortly thereafter, the George W. Bush administration announced a War on Terrorism, accompanied by the doctrine of preemptive military action dubbed the Bush doctrine. In 2002 the Iraq disarmament crisis arose primarily as a diplomatic situation. In October 2002, the United States Congress granted President Bush the authority to wage war against Iraq. The Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq was worded so as to encourage, but not require, UN Security Council approval for military action. In November 2002, United Nations actions regarding Iraq culminated in the unanimous passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 and the resumption of weapons inspections. The United States also began preparations for an invasion of Iraq, with a host of diplomatic, public relations and military preparations.


Invasion justification and goals

The stated justification for the invasion included Iraqi production and use of weapons of mass destruction, links with terrorist organizations and human rights violations in Iraq under the Saddam Hussein government. To that end, the stated goals of the invasion, according to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, were: to end the Saddam Hussein government and help Iraq transition to representative self-rule; to find and eliminate weapons of mass destruction and terrorists; to collect intelligence on networks of weapons of mass destruction and terrorists; to end sanctions and to deliver humanitarian support; and to secure Iraq's oil fields and resources. Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense stated in an interview on May 28, 2003 in Vanity Fair that 'For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction'.

No weapons of mass destruction or related programs (the claims of the Bush administration - click here for a list) were found by the Iraq Survey Group, headed by inspector David Kay; additionally, documents that have turned up indicate that the Baath party was attempting to distance itself from jehadi fighters instead of working with them [10], and that any connection is new. The Bush administration has argued that the invasion was still justified, and that accomplishments of the invasion include the collapse of Saddam Hussein's government, the capture of former Palestine Liberation Front leader Abu Abbas, and securing of Iraq's oil fields and resources.

File:Kiss.jpeg

An Iraqi man kisses a member of the US Third Infatry Division after the fall of Baghdad

File:Bushsadam.jpg While many Iraqis are happy to get rid of Hussein, anti-U.S. marches however draw thousands ([11])


The Iraq Survey Group under Bush-appointed inspector David Kay in October reported discovering the following key points: "We have not yet found stocks of weapons", difficulty in explaining why, clandistine laboratories suitable for "preserving BW expertice" which contained equipment subject to UN monitoring, a prison laboratory complex which Kay describes as "possibly used in human testing of BW agents", strains of bacteria kept in one scientists home (including a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B), 12-year old documents and small parts concerning uranium enrichment kept found in a scientist's home [12], partially declared UAVs, capability to produce a type of fuel useful for SCUD missiles, a scientist who had drawn plans for how to make longer-range missiles [13], and attempts to acquire missile technology from North Korea, and destroyed documents of unknown significance. [14]. Most topics concerning biological agents are discussed as "BW-applicable" or "BW-capable"; the report mentions nothing that was being used in such a context. Chemical weapons are referred to in a similar fashion. The nuclear program, according to the report, had not done any work since 1991, but had attempted to retain scientists and documentation from it in case sanctions were ever dropped.

However, Kay himself has since stated (concerning Iraqi WMDs): "We were almost all wrong - and I certainly include myself here", and has since been in the media trying to explain why the US believed Iraq was a threat when it actually had minimal to no programs (let alone weapons) concerning weapons of mass destruction. He has stated that many intelligence analysts have come to him "in apology that the world we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed" [15]. He has also directly contradicted since then much of the October report. David Kay is a Republican who donated money to both the RNC and the campaign of president George W. Bush. Before David Kay came out about this, many of his scientists had already done so. [16].

Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee during his oral report the following though: "Based on the intelligence that existed, I think it was reasonable to reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Now that you know reality on the ground as opposed to what you estimated before, you may reach a different conclusion — although I must say I actually think what we learned during the inspection made Iraq a more dangerous place, potentially, than, in fact, we thought it was even before the war."

Dr. Kay's team has established that the Iraqi regime had the production capacity and know-how to produce a great deal more chemical and biological weaponry when international economic sanctions were lifted, a policy change which was actively being sought by France, Germany and Russia.

The current situation concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction seems similar to that portrayed by Hussein Kamel in 1995 and that of Imad Khadduri[17], that Iraq had almost completely destroyed its programs, but sought to retain as much knowledge and information that, should sanctions ever end, the programs would not have to start over from scratch.

After the fall of Baghdad, U.S. officials claimed that Iraqi officials were being harbored in Syria, and several high-ranking Iraqis have since been detained after being expelled from Syria.

When the debate about the justification resumed given that no weapons of mass destructions were found, it was argued that the invasion was however justified because Saddam Hussein's government had killed between 350,000 and 600,000 people in ethnic cleansing campaigns against Kurds and Shiites, and an Estimated 61,000 from Baghdad alone were executed between 1979 and 2003. [18] Critics raise the question why the US government did not do much to prevent or to punish those crimes when they happened but use them years later for a war initially explained with different reasons. The use of chemical weapons against Kurds in 1983 was known by US intelligence, Donald Rumsfeld, at the time presidential envoy of Ronald Reagan, however spoke of "his close relationship" with Saddam Hussein at that time and visited him. After the Gulf War the US government encouraged rebellions by the Shiites but did not intervene when Hussein crushed the rebels. ([19]) ([20])



Documents that have turned up indicate that the Baath party was attempting to distance itself from jehadi fighters instead of working with them [21], and that any connection is new. The Bush administration has argued that the invasion was justified, and that accomplishments of the invasion include the collapse of Saddam Hussein's government, the capture of former Palestine Liberation Front leader Abu Abbas, and securing of Iraq's oil fields and resources.

Human Rights Watch has issued a report stating that the justification of "human rights" for the war does not meet appropriate standards for the level of suffering that it causes in the case of Iraq even.

The United Nations announced a report on March 2nd, 2004 from the weapons inspection teams stating that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction of any significance after 1994. [22]

Support and opposition

See Support and opposition for the 2003 invasion of Iraq for the full article.

The Bush administration claimed that the U.S.-led coalition against 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 were, roughly: United States (250,000), United Kingdom (45,000), Australia (2,000), Denmark (200), and Poland (54). Ten other countries were known to have offered small numbers of noncombat forces, mostly either medical teams and specialists in decontamination. In several of these countries a majority of the public was opposed to the war. In Spain polls reported at one time a 90% opposition to the war.

Popular opposition to war on Iraq led to global protests, and the war was criticized by Belgium, Russia, France, the People's Republic of China, Germany, Switzerland, The Vatican, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, Mexico, the Arab League, the African Union and others.

There are some that claim the US intervention took place without any international legal framework. Others think that the UN Security Council Resolutions authorizing the 1991 invasion gave legal authority to use "...all necessary means...", which is diplomatic code for going to war. This war ended with a cease fire instead of a permanent peace treaty. Their view was that Iraq had violated the terms of the cease-fire by breaching two key conditions and thus made the invasion of Iraq a legal continuation of the earlier war. To support this stance, one has to "reactivate" the war resolution from 1991; if a war resolution can be reactivated ten years after the fact, it would imply that almost any nation that has ever been at war that ended in a ceasefire (such as Korea) could have the war restarted if any other nation felt at any time that they were no longer meeting the conditions of the cease fire that ended that war. Since the majority of the United Nations security council members (both permanent and rotating) did not support the attack, it appears that they viewed the attack as not being valid under the 1991 resolution.

A resolution drafted and accepted the year before the invasion endorsed the use of military action to force Iraq to comply with the United Nations desires, and every country that sat upon the Security Council voted to draft that resolution. However, since they did not vote for a further resolution apparently they did not think that Iraq's behaviour contravened UN desires such that military action was justified.

Several nations say the attack violated international law as a war of aggression since it lacked the validity of a U.N. Security Council resolution to authorize military force. The Egyptian former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali called the intervention a violation of the UN charter.

The United States and United Kingdom claim it was a legal action which they were within their rights to undertake. Along with Poland and Australia, the invasion was supported by the governments of several European nations, including the Czech Republic, Denmark, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, and Spain.

Many people regarded the attack on Iraq to be hypocritical, when other nations such as Israel are also in breach of UN resolutions and have nuclear weapons; this argument is controversial [23], as Iraq's history of actually using chemical weapons (against Iran and the Kurdish population in Iraq) suggested at the time that Iraq was a far greater threat. Some claim, however, that this in turn is hypocritical, since the USA delivered the chemicals in the first place, even when well aware of what it was being used for. It is questionable whether these crimes were a mere excuse for the war so many years later and given that no weapons of mass destruction can be found.

Although Iraq was known to have pursued an active nuclear weapons development program previously, as well tried to procure materials and equipment for their manufacture, these weapons and material have yet to be discovered. This casts doubt on some of the accusations against Iraq, despite previous UN assertions that Iraq likely harbored such weapons, and that Iraq failed to document and give UN inspectors access to areas suspected of illegal weapons production. However, some believe that the weapons were moved into Syria and Lebanon.

In a poll conducted by western media 51% of Iraqis stated they opposed the foreign forces occupying Iraq, while 39% supported it. Over 65% of the 2,500 Iraqis polled said that their lives were better than before the war. 48% of Iraqis felt that the U.S.-led coalition was right to invade, compared with 39% said it was wrong. People were evenly divided on whether the invasion had humiliated or liberated Iraq. More than 40% said they had no confidence whatsoever in the British and U.S. forces, and 51% opposed the presence of any coalition forces in Iraq. Nearly 20% said attacks on foreign forces were acceptable, 14% said the same about attacks on the civilian administrators of the Coalition Provisional Authority and 10% on foreigners working with the CPA. A narrow majority said life was better without Sadam.([24]) ([25])

In January 25, 2004, al Mada, a daily newspaper in Iraq, published a list of individuals and organizations who it says received oil sales contracts via the UN's Oil for Food program, from the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein. Included in the list of individuals and organizations was British MP George Galloway's charity Mariam Appeal (Galloway had previously been cleared of similar charges against himself that were based on forged documents). President Sukarnoputri of Indonesia also figures in the allegations, as well as Benon V. Sevan head of the U.N.'s Oil for Food program, the Russian Orthodox Church, and dozens of journalists. The list, which has caused the launch of a United Nations investigation on the Oil for food program, has raised many concerns due to its similarity to other forgeries to come out of Iraq since last May. There has long been speculation from conservative circles and anecdotal evidence that the Oil For Food program was being mismanaged and used to buy Hussein's regime covert international support and increase his personal fortune.

Withdrawal from Iraq by coalition members

A few days after a terrorist attack at Madrid, popular opposition to the war was reinvigorated in Spain and the ruling Partido Popular was accused of deceiving the public by blaming the attack on ETA rather than fundamentalist Muslims. A new government was elected and announced that they no longer support the war and are withdrawing all of their troops. The prime minister elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party who ousted former conservative prime minister Jose Maria Aznar stated, "The occupation is a fiasco. There have been almost more deaths after the war than during the war," he said. "The occupying forces have not allowed the United Nations to take control of the situation."

Following on the heels of this, several other nations that once formed the Coalition of the Willing have begun to balk at their role. The Dutch refused a US offer to commit their troops to Iraq past June 30th, while Honduran officials stated that they plan to withdraw their troops as well - the announcement coming one day after they had stated that they would stay. It is speculated that El Salvador and Guatemala will likely follow suit. Two-thirds of Italians favor the withdrawl of their troops, although their government has pledged to stay, along with the governments of Britain and Poland. South Korea has cancelled its plans to deploy an additional 3,600 troops to around Kirkuk, which may prove problematic to US military planners. On March 18th, 2004, Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski told reporters that he was misled about the Iraq war, but stated that they have no immediate plans to withdraw from Iraq any sooner than the start of 2005, which would be about six months earlier than currently planned. Kwasniewski later claimed his words were distorted by being translated first from polish to french and then into english.

Many nations that have announced withdrawl plans or are considering them have stated that they may reconsider if there is a new UN resolution that grants the UN more authority in Iraq.

Hussein Family Whereabouts

Saddam Hussein was captured on December 13, 2003 by the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division during Operation Red Dawn. His sons Uday and Qusay were killed earlier in 2003 during a raid by the U.S. 101st Airborne Division.

This campaign has featured a variety of new and weighted terminology, much coined by the U.S. government and then repeated by the media. The name "Operation Iraqi Freedom", for example, expresses one viewpoint of the purpose of the invasion. Also notable was the exclusive usage of "regime" to refer to the Saddam Hussein government (see also regime change), and "death squads" to refer to fedayeen paramilitary forces. Members of the Hussein government were called by disparaging nicknames - e.g., "Chemical Ali" (Ali Hassan al-Majid), "Comical Ali" (Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf), "Mrs Anthrax" (Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash) - for propaganda purposes and because Western peoples are unfamiliar with Arabic names.

Other terminology introduced or popularized during the war include:

  • Shock and awe - The strategy of focusing on reducing the enemy's will to fight through a display of overwhelming force.
  • "embedding" - process of assigning reporters to particular military units
  • "coalition of the willing"
  • untidiness - Rumsfeld's term for the looting and unrest which followed the government's collapse

Media coverage

Main article: 2003 invasion of Iraq media coverage

Media coverage of this war was different in certain ways from that of the Gulf War. The Pentagon established the policy of "embedding" reporters with military units. Viewers in the United States were able to watch U.S. tanks rolling into Baghdad live on television, with a split screen image of the Iraqi Minister of Information claiming that U.S. forces were not in the city. Many foreign observers of the media and especially the television coverage in the USA felt that it was excessively partisan and in some cases "gung-ho".

Another difference was the wide and independent coverage in the World Wide Web demonstrating that for web-surfers in rich countries and the elites in poorer countries, the internet has become mature as a medium, giving about half a billion people access to different versions of events.

However, the coverage itself was intrinsically biased by the fact that internet penetration in Iraq was already very weak (estimate of 12,000 users in Iraq in 2002 [26]), and the deliberate destruction of Iraqi telecommunication facilities by US forces made internet communication even more difficult. Different versions of truth by people who have equal ignorance of first-hand, raw data are by definition a very biased substitute for original, first-hand reports from people living locally. The World Wide Web did deliver some first-hand reports from bloggers such as Salam Pax.

Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based news network, which was formed in 1996, gained a lot of worldwide attention for its coverage of the war. Their broadcasts were popular in much of the Arab world, but also to some degree in western nations, with major American networks such as CNN and MSNBC re-broadcasting some of their coverage. Al-Jazeera was well-known for their graphic footage of civilian casualties, which American news media branded as overly sensationalistic. The English website of Al-Jazeera was brought down during the middle of the Iraq war by hackers who saw its coverage as casting a negative view on the American cause.

Many individuals have claimed that European coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was not as unbiased as leading European press agencies led their readers and viewers to believe, pointing out that while people in the US were generally not too terribly surprised by the swift victory of the Coalition over the Iraqi army, most people in Europe and the Middle East were dumbfounded that despite a steady stream of negative press coverage on the Coalitions successes, the Iraqi army was defeated in just over three weeks. Military leaders shut off the BBC connection to the HMS Ark Royal after grumbling among sailors that it was biased in favor of Iraqi reports. [27]

Last December, after Saddam Hussein's capture, the BBC issued a directive to all of its journalists that Saddam Hussein no longer be refereed to as the "former Dictator" and be refereed to as the "deposed former president" in all news stories. The BBC’s reasoning for this was because Hussein had been elected with over 99% of the votes, it would not be accurate to refer to him as a dictator, since according to the BBC, he was the elected president of Iraq.

French journalist Alain Hertoghe published a book accusing the French press in particular and the European press in general of not being objective in its coverage of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Hertoghe's book, La Guerre a Outrances (The War of Outrages), criticizes French press coverage of the war as being pessimistic of the US led Coalition's chance of success and continually focusing on challenges faced during the invasion. Hertoghe also claims in his book that the European media became so wrapped up in its own particular biases against the United States that they fed disinformation to their readers and viewers and misled them as to the unfolding events. The European coverage's concerns about the military becoming bogged down in Iraq and the war ending badly seem to have come true, at least for the time being. Since being published, Hertoghe has been fired from his position at French newspaper La Croix and only one major French newspaper has written a review for his book.

International initiatives such as http://amor.cms.hu-berlin.de/~h0444e1w/massmail.htm protested against the U.S. media for downplaying and misinterpreting protests as antiamericanism and accused them of foul language such as calling Chirac "A balding Joan of Arc in drag", the French "frogeating weasels" (New York Post) or stating that "Chirac and his poodle Putin have severely damaged the United Nations". Questions are also raised about U.S. media coverage given that in the U.S. pre-war polls showed that a majority of the population believed that Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attacks although none of the terrorists was Iraqi and no proofs of an Iraqi connection to the attack are known.

Many protestors did display hostile attitudes toward both the United States and Israel and many Arab and Mid Eastern showed overt sympathies towards Saddam Hussein.

Peter Arnett, who had won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1966 for his coverage of the war in Vietnam was fired by MSNBC and National Geographic after he had declared in an interview with the Iraqi information ministry that he believed the U.S. strategy of "shock and awe" had failed. He also went on to tell Iraqi State TV that he had told "Americans about the determination of the Iraqi forces, the determination of the government, and the willingness to fight for their country", and that reports from Baghdad about civilian casualties had helped antiwar protesters undermine the Bush administration's strategy. The interview was given 10 days before the fall of Baghdad, more than 500 US soldiers have since been killed.

On April 2, 2003, in a speech given by British Home Secretary David Blunkett while in New York City, Blunkett also commented on what he believed to be sympathetic and corrupt reporting of Iraq by Arab news sources. He told the audience that "It's hard to get the true facts if the reporters of Al Jazeera are actually linked into, and are only there because they are provided with facilities and support from the regime." This statement caused editorials in British left-wing newspapers calling for Blunkett's resignation.

Iraq

War casualities

See also

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2003_invasion_of_Iraq&oldid=3011361"