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Justification of US Intervention in Iraq against Saddam Hussein.

The Iraq War, also known as the Occupation of Iraq, the Second Gulf War, or in the US Operation Iraqi Freedom, is an ongoing conflict which began on March 20, 2003 with the United States-led invasion of Iraq.

The main rationale for the Iraq War offered by US President George W. Bush, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair, and their domestic and foreign supporters was that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction. These weapons, it was argued, posed a threat to the United States, its allies and interests. In the 2003 State of the Union Address, Bush claimed that the US could not wait until the threat from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein became imminent. After the invasion, however, no evidence was found of such weapons. Some US officials cited claims of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. No evidence of any substantial al-Qaeda connection has been found.

The war began on March 20, 2003, when a largely British and American force supported by small contingents from Australia, Denmark and Poland invaded Iraq. The invasion soon led to the defeat and flight of Saddam Hussein. The US led coalition occupied Iraq and attempted to establish a new democratic government; however it failed to restore order in Iraq. The unrest led to asymmetric warfare with the Iraqi insurgency, civil war between many Sunni and Shia Iraqis and al-Qaeda operations in Iraq. As a result of this failure to restore order, a growing number of coalition nations have withdrawn troops from Iraq. The causes and consequences of the war remain controversial.

Approximately nine months after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States initiated Operation Southern Focus as a change to its response strategy, by increasing the overall number of missions and selecting targets throughout the no-fly zones in order to disrupt the military command structure in Iraq. The weight of bombs dropped increased from none in March 2002 and 0.3 in April 2002 to between 8 and 14 tons per month in May-August, reaching a pre-war peak of 54.6 tons in September 2002.

The Original US justification for the Iraq War was the Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and later that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was collaborating with the Al-Qaeda terrorist group. However, the intelligence on which both these claims were has been subject to criticism and to some extent discredited post-invasion, and the administration has also been accused of falsely representing the available intelligence to the republic. This has led many war opponents to consider the Iraq War as based on lies.

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