Assignment Iraq

Assignment Iraq

¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country" (Hijacking Catastrophe).

Nazi Reich Marshall Hermann Goering announced this belief at the Nuremberg war trials. He predicted precisely what the Bush administration did to get Americans to side with them after the September 11, 2001 attacks to invade Iraq.

Why Iraq though? The U.S. had already invaded Afghanistan, the home of Al Qaeda, an Islamist terrorist group responsible for the September 11 attacks. While the American military had Al Qaeda and the Taliban, an Islamist political and militant group allied with Al Qaeda, on the run, the U.S. shifted some attention away from that and started a war with Iraq.

It all started with Iraq's decision to invade Kuwait in 1990 because they disputed Kuwait's oil production and accused Kuwait of using the Rumaila oil field that is almost entirely in Iraq. With Iraq invading Kuwait it, "Allowed the United Nations (UN) security council to create a wide coalition in favor of action against Iraq, including the key Arab states of Syria and Egypt, as well as traditional US allies Saudi Arabia and Turkey" (pg. 3 backgrounder Iraq). The UN quickly put out sanctions that gave Iraq only a couple of months to withdraw and during that time the US put a massive amount of troops in the Gulf and pushed hard for military action, showing a U.S. government mistrust of Iraq.

When Iraq didn't withdraw, on January 16, 1991, about 5 months after the invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. attacked. Iraq was driven out of Kuwait on February 27th. In April, the official terms of a ceasefire were established against Iraq as the UN passed UNSC Resolution 687. The terms of the ceasefire called for the "...elimination of Iraq's programs for developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, dismantlement of its long-range missiles, a system of inspections to verify compliance, acceptance of a UN-demarcated Iraq-Kuwait border, payment of war compensation and the return of Kuwaiti property and prisoners of war" (pg. 4 background Iraq). The UN special commission (UNSCOM) came to Iraq in 1991, "To verify Iraq's compliance with the weapons provisions of UNSC 687" (pg. 4 backgrounder Iraq). The "inspectors destroyed 38,500 prohibited chemical warheads and millions of liters of chemical agents" (pg. 5 backgrounder Iraq). This information would be used by the Bush Administration as one of the main reasons to attack Iraq in 2003.

The U.S. government used other examples to show that the American people could not trust Iraq. The U.S. with help from Britain set up two no-fly zones in Iraq, one above the thirty-sixth parallel and the other in the south up to thirty-second parallel, to stop air strikes by Iraqi aircrafts on Kurds and Shia's. In 1996 the UN Security Council resolution 986 established a program in Iraq called Oil-for-Food. "Under this program, Iraq could sell specified amounts of oil during every six-month period" (pg. 7 backgrounder Iraq). The Oil-for-Food program was presented as a humanitarian effort by the US and Britain but really, "It was intended as a stopgap measure to sustain economic sanctions while allowing more humanitarian goods into the country" (pg. 8 backgrounder Iraq). Baghdad used trade to get international support to change or get rid of the sanctions in Iraq and "By 2001, sanctions were crumbling around the edges. Most of Iraq's neighbors, including its adversary Syria, and countries friendly to the West like Turkey, Jordan and some Gulf states, were involved in sanctions-busting trade with Baghdad" (pg. 9 backgrounder Iraq). The Bush administration could argue that the American people could not trust other countries to follow through on sanctions against Iraq.

The Bush Administration could also show that the Iraqi regime was corrupt and had no concern for human rights. Iraq has one of the worst human rights records in the world. "Arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, mass killings, assassinations of political critics and routine torture have left the country devastated" (pg. 13 background Iraq). The UN has many laws to support human rights and one that Iraq broke was, "The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984) holds States responsible for preventing torture and makes it legally punishable" (Human Rights). If the Iraqi regime had no concern for human rights, then Americans could be at risk.

The Bush administration also played on the perception that Iraqis were different and also potentially had a history of not trusting America. In the article, "Who are the Arabs?" the writers point out that modern Arab countries were "drawn by European powers" after World War One. This could lead to resent toward America, a nation allied with Western European powers. Most Iraqis are Arab, and, according to Nancy Beth Jackson, many people in the U.S. are prejudiced against Arabs because "their language, dress, prayers, behavior, and thoughts don't fit into any neat pattern easily grasped by Westerners" (pg. 76 images that