The Iraq War W.M.D.s The US Invades The problem goes on.

MWDs After “Desert Storm” Iraq was placed under an embargo and was suspected of building “Weapons of Mass Destruction” or W.M.D.s: Poison Gas, Biological, even Nuclear Weapons! After 9/11 the Bush administration began to speculate about an Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection, and insisted on weapon inspections. By the end of 2002 Iraq had turned over a list of all its weapons and submitted to UN inspections In Jan Chief UN inspector Hans Blix, declared that the Iraqi Government was co-operating and that there were no signs of MWDs Although he could not confirm that Chemical weapons and Anthrax had been destroyed as Iraq claimed

Invasion The US, France and Britain believed Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and were trying to get.. “yellow cake” to make a nuclear weapons In his Jan 2003 State of The Union address Bush said: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Ideas based on faulty “intelligence” later shown as false. March 2003 Hans Blix declared that: “No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found“ And that disarmament was progressing at a good pace But the Bush Administration announced that ”Diplomacy had failed” When the UN wouldn’t authorize action… The US and the UK led a “Coalition of the Willing” On March 20, 2003 a joint invasion of over 300,000 was launched “Operation Iraqi Freedom”

A Quick Victory but a Long War By April The Capital Bagdad had fallen And with it the Iraqi Government By December 2003 Saddam was captured But Iraq was a nation divided by culture. The Sunni Arabs Had ruled under Saddam and they fought back But they were a minority. The Majority are Shia, and allied with Iran, they fought for themselves Only the Khurds reliably fought on our side. Sunni Arabs fought the Shia Kurds and us. Shia fought Sunni, Kurds and sometimes Us The fighting went on for years

Surge and Withdrawal 2005 Elections were held but the Shia took Power The Khurds began an independent state which has been successful In the rest of Iraq the government couldn’t deliver services and the Sunni were discriminated against, Civil War and insurrection raged In 2007 We added 20,000 troops to put down the insurrection. We began to work with Sunni leaders It seemed to work By the end of 2011 we withdrew our combat troops And the Iraqi Government took over Since then Conflict between Shia and Sunni Arabs continues.

ISIL in Iraq In the spring of 2015 the “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” took Mosul Iraq’s second biggest city. They have taken much territory and raped and killed “infidels” including Christians, Yazidies, and even Shia Muslims We have began airstrikes and our allies have made progress retaking Mosul In February 2015 alone over 2600 died And probably many more as Anbar province (where ISIL dominates) was too chaotic to make a count. Recently (May 17, 2015) ISIL has taken the important city of Ramadi Fighting continues