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Issue Date: March 01, 2007

Research Feature

Iraq War:
A Guide to World News Digest Coverage (2002– )

On March 19, 2003, the U.S. bombed several sites in Baghdad. The next day, a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, claiming that the country's dictator, Saddam Hussein, was harboring weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and had failed to cooperate with peaceful attempts to negotiate disarmament.

Coalition troops captured Baghdad less than a month after the invasion, and Bush declared that Hussein's reign was at an end. On May 1, 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush announced that the war's "major combat operations" had been completed. But the subsequent occupation of Iraq by the U.S.-led coalition engendered a violent insurgency, leading to a drawn-out war that over seven years has killed almost 110,000 people, mostly Iraqi civilians.

The occupation and insurgency exacerbated ethnic and religious tensions in Iraq. The majority of Iraqis were Shiite Muslims, but substantial minorities of Sunni Muslims (who had been politically privileged under Hussein) and ethnic Kurds each dominated regions of the country. Although much of the initial insurgent activity was conducted by Sunni militias that attacked Shiite targets as well as coalition targets, strong Shiite militias became increasingly prominent actors in the country's bloody upheavals.

As they continued to battle the insurgency, U.S. and coalition forces also worked to foster the formation of an autonomous Iraqi government. This process brought the country's divisions to the fore, pitting Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish parties against one another, as well as secular factions against fundamentalist Islamic factions.

The invasion and occupation have been highly divisive outside of Iraq: domestically within the U.S., Britain and other countries lending military support, and also internationally. Initially, the U.S. and Britain sought a U.N. resolution authorizing military force against Iraq, but the motion was opposed by two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, France and Russia. Germany also took a strong stance against the invasion.

In 2007, the U.S. sent 30,000 additional troops to Iraq to battle insurgents, particularly in Baghdad. Great Britain, the U.S.'s principal ally in the war, announced in October 2007 that it would withdraw half of the 5,000 troops it had stationed in Iraq by spring 2008. In 2009, U.S. combat forces withdrew from Iraqi cities in accordance with an agreement between the U.S. and Iraq that stipulated the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the country by 2011.

Iraqi politicians worked to politically unify the country in the face of sectarian divisions exacerbated by the war and a continued onslaught of insurgent violence.

Lead-up to the Invasion

Although some analysts have suggested that the plan to invade Iraq was developed by U.S. officials years before 2003, public discussion of the possibility began in 2002. In that year, the Bush administration began to tout U.S. intelligence suggesting that Hussein was reconstituting illicit weapons programs that had been banned by the U.N. a decade earlier.


At the same time, Bush administration officials suggested that Hussein's government was linked with the Al Qaeda terrorist network responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. Information emerging since the invasion has undermined both claims. Click here for links to our coverage of the intelligence disclosures that have called into question the administration's justifications for war. The links below catalog our coverage of the key developments leading up to the invasion.

Key Events of the War By Year

Following are links to our coverage of major events occurring in each year of the war.


In 2003, the coalition invaded Iraq and a month and a half of fighting with traditional army forces ensued. A campaign of guerilla violence from Iraqi militias followed as the occupying forces struggled to establish a transitional Iraqi government. In December, U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein.


In 2004, fighting between coalition and insurgent forces continued, leading to especially violent battles in the Sunni-dominated cities of Fallujah and Najaf. Sectarian violence also intensified, and the U.S. officially transferred political control of the country to an interim Iraqi government. The publication of photographs showing U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi detainees soured worldwide public opinion toward the occupation.


2005 saw a continuation of insurgent violence, especially against Iraqis enlisting in the country's police or security forces. Three sets of national elections were held, all generating high voter turnout despite threats of violence. Most Sunnis boycotted the January elections for a transitional government, but later votes on a new constitution and a permanent government saw much higher Sunni participation.


In 2006, ethnic violence intensified after a wave of Sunni attacks culminated in the bombing of the Askariya shrine, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam. The new government struggled to deal with what many observers began to regard as a full-blown civil war. Debate within the U.S. about Iraq policy intensified. Saddam Hussein was convicted of crimes against humanity by an Iraqi court, and was executed.


In 2007, the U.S. implemented a controversial 30,000-troop increase in its forces in Iraq. By the end of the year, some reports indicated a decrease in sectarian attacks, though there were more U.S. soldier and Iraqi civilian deaths in 2007 than in any other year of the war. The U.S. also began to accuse Iranian government forces of materially supporting insurgents, and Britain began the process of reducing its military presence in Iraq by a quarter. In the last months of 2007, tensions mounted in northern Iraq as Turkey bombed Kurdish guerrilla targets across the Turkish-Iraqi border and threatened broader action.


2008 began with attempts in the Iraqi government to facilitate Sunni-Shia reconciliation. In March, the fifth anniversary of the war's inception and the death of the 4,000th U.S. soldier were followed by an Iraqi military campaign against Shiite militias in Basra. The 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign fed the national debate about the future of the U.S. presence in Iraq. In December, Iraq and the U.S. finalized an agreement authorizing the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq beyond 2008. The agreement stipulated that the U.S. withdraw from the country entirely by the end of 2011.


In early 2009, newly inaugurated President Barack Obama announced a timeline for the U.S. withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq ahead of the 2011 deadline set by the previous year's status-of-forces agreement between the U.S. and Iraq. Provincial elections were held in late January, and in June, U.S. troops withdrew from Iraqi cities in compliance with the 2008 status-of-forces agreement. As large-scale bombings by insurgents continued to claim dozens of lives on a regular basis, Iraq's major political parties began planning for national elections that would take place in early 2010. In December, Iraq's parliament ended months of deadlock over a controversial election law by passing an altered version of the legislation.


Parliamentary elections, held on March 7, dominated the Iraqi political landscape for the first part of 2010.

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

The War's Human Costs

The Iraq war has killed at least 109,000 people, most of them Iraqi civilians, and has prompted millions more to flee their homes. Military losses, although far fewer than civilian deaths, have been far greater than many analysts had predicted. Over 4,000 U.S. soldiers have died, along with over 300 other coalition soldiers and over 9,000 Iraqi security forces working for the post-Hussein governments.

New Intelligence Challenges War Justification

Since the invasion, there has been a stream of intelligence disclosures that undermine the reasons given by U.S. and British officials to justify the attack. These revelations have prompted lawmakers and the press to investigate the sources of the flawed intelligence, as well as the question of whether officials knew or should have known that the information they were relying upon was faulty.

Reconstruction

Since the first days of the invasion, the U.S.-led coalition has stated a commitment to the rebuilding of physical infrastructure damaged by the war. The execution of reconstruction, however, has proved controversial. The U.S. and its allies prevented nations that had opposed the invasion from bidding on the lucrative reconstruction contracts, and gave millions of dollars in no-bid contracts to powerful U.S. companies. Audits of U.S. reconstruction funds have suggested that millions have been misspent.


Meanwhile, insurgents have continued to successfully attack infrastructure targets in their effort to sabotage the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the Iraqi governments that have succeeded it. In early 2006, representatives of the office of the CPA special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction presented evidence to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Iraq's oil, water and sewer services were all performing below prewar levels.

Iraq's Post-Invasion Governments

Much of the effort to rebuild Iraq has gone toward the formation of an autonomous Iraqi government. The ongoing process has brought the country's ethnic and religious divisions to the fore, and at times has directly fueled sectarian violence. Since the U.S. handed sovereignty over to an interim Iraqi government in June 2004, several national elections have taken place.


In 2006, the Iraqi parliament approved the country's first full-term government since Hussein's regime had been ousted. The cabinet was led by Prime Minister Nouri Kamel al-Maliki and included representatives of all of Iraq's major ethnic and political groups.


Parliamentary elections held on March 7, 2010, seemed to give a plurality of seats to the party of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. The failure of any party to achieve a majority meant that Allawi would have to oversee the formation of a governing coalition.

Hussein's Trials and Execution, Other War Crimes Trials

Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces on December 13, 2003, eight months after the toppling of his regime. He was tried in a war crimes tribunal established by the Iraqi interim government. U.S. forces retained physical custody of Hussein, though the Iraqi government had legal custody of him. He was arraigned on several charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but his first trial—beginning in October 2005—involved the 1982 torture and execution of nearly 150 men and teenage boys from the Shiite town of Dujail.


The trial saw many delays and disruptions, including the murder of three defense attorneys acting for Hussein or his codefendants and the resignation of the presiding judge. Although a second trial—on charges that Hussein had ordered the 1988 gassing of Kurdish villagers in the town of Halabja—began in August 2006, Hussein was convicted of the charges in his first trial and sentenced to death before the second trial had been long underway. Hussein was executed on December 30, 2006. Since Hussein's execution, several more officials of his government have been tried and sentenced to jail or execution.

U.S. Opinion and Debate

When President Bush launched the campaign against Iraq in 2003, he had broad support from the U.S. Congress. Although significant antiwar protests occurred in major U.S. cities, polls showed that the majority of U.S. citizens supported the decision to go to war. However, as the war endured beyond its predicted length and continued to claim the lives of U.S. soldiers, U.S. support for it weakened. Many lawmakers that had initially supported the war began to question it, and some eventually called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Public dissatisfaction with the war has intensified, and has been cited as a major reason for the Democratic victory in the 2006 congressional elections. The war was an important issue in the 2008 presidential election campaign.

Speeches and Primary Documents

Following are links to excerpts and full texts of major speeches and documents relating to the war.


In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion the U.S. claimed that, despite modest cooperation from Hussein, the U.N. weapons inspections regime was not working, and that in fact Iraq was reconstituting forbidden weapons programs.


The war itself has continued to be controversial, and U.S. leaders have increasingly been pressed to justify its conduct in speeches and statements. Meanwhile, U.S. and British government agencies have compiled reports on various aspects of the war, including the intelligence used to justify it and its impact on global terrorism.

Speeches and Documents in the Lead-up to the Invasion

Speeches and Documents During the War

Other Resources

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