Causes of 2003

Breakdown over weapons inspections

1997: Saddam ordered at least ten families to act as human shields in a confrontation with inspectors; August 1998: Iraq suspended cooperation with weapons inspectors; October 1998: the Iraq Liberation Act gave $100 million to Iraqi opposition groups

Covert regime change funding

1998-2002: Congress put $78 million towards covert action, support for opposition groups and other efforts toward regime change

Air confrontations in 2002

Iraqi defenders attacked coalition aircraft on 500 occasions, prompting 90 coalition air strikes in response

Petrodollar motive

October 2000: Saddam removed the US dollar as backing for oil deals - ending a policy put in place by Nixon in 1973 to ensure the security of the USD after removing the gold standard

Cheney on Middle East oil

"The Middle East, with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the ultimate prize lies"

Iraq's oil endowment

2nd largest oil reserves with 112 billion barrels and the cheapest oil to produce at $1 per barrel

US oil dependency

US dependence on Middle Eastern oil rose from 8% of US imports in 1985 to 23% in 2003

Reaction to Iraq's foreign oil deals

1998 aggression (Operations Phoenix Scorpion and Desert Thunder) was a reaction to Iraq signing new oil agreements, e.g. $3.5 billion with Russia's Lukoil; in 2001 there were $1.5 billion in deals with France's TotalEnergy

Oil supply control rationale

Increased control over Iraqi oil would let the US quickly increase world supply if necessary to prevent catastrophic rapid increases in international oil prices (post-1973)

Official political/humanitarian strategy

Establish a government representative of Shia, Sunni and Kurds and remove the Ba'ath regime/Saddam; Cheney, Feith and Wolfowitz predicted US forces would be "greeted as liberators"

Bush on the war (July 2003)

"As long as terrorists and their allies plot to harm America, America is at war…we did not choose this war."

Paul O'Neill on the war

The Treasury Secretary said "it was finding a way to do it"

Fabricated terrorism links

The US fabricated secret meetings between Bin Laden and Iraqi security forces; Iraq did refuse to commit to anti-terrorism (Hussein said no to a US request to help against Al Qaeda)

Bush doctrine of pre-emption

Preventative rationale: a country is allowed to unilaterally attack another if it has a hostile government that may one day be capable of attacking, in self-defence

Axis of Evil speech

29 January 2002 State of the Union - Bush said the kicking out of weapons inspectors proved Iraq had "something to hide from the civilised world"

Cited inspection refusals

Iraq denied UN inspectors access to the Amiriyah Tuberculosis Vaccine Facility (August 1995), the Al-Taji Ammunition Storage Site (February 1998) and the Mahmoudiya Ammunition Storage Area (March 2003, just before the invasion)

Real reason for Iraqi non-cooperation

Information on key scientific personnel and security installations was being provided by UN inspectors to the CIA and Israel

CIA claims on Iraq

Reported Saddam "never abandoned his nuclear weapons program" (December 2001) and was "preparing for war" (October 2002); relied on incorrect evidence - a supposed contact with Foreign Minister Sabri that had "virtually nothing" on WMDs (CIA fabricated report)

Blair's 45 minutes claim

24 September 2002 - claimed "Iraq has chemical and biological weapons that could be activated within 45 minutes"

Anthrax claim

A 2001 CIA document claimed a belief in "thousands of liters of anthrax and botulinum toxin per month"

UN Resolution 1441

November 2002 - gave Saddam a final opportunity to prove the absence of WMD; he submitted a 12,000 page report; a French memorandum noted "Iraqi cooperation is improving"

Powell's Security Council presentation

5 February 2003 - presented pictures, satellite photos and a conversation recording as evidence of illegal Ba'athist activities, concluding Iraq had tried to obtain 500 tons of uranium from Niger and was restarting nuclear weapons

Bush's fear rhetoric

7 October 2002 - described Saddam as a "murderous tyrant" with "instruments of mass death and destruction"

Bush's post-9/11 leverage

His approval rating rose to 90%, giving him enormous leverage in convincing Americans that destroying the Iraqi regime was essential to the war on terrorism

Public misperceptions

September 2003 World Public Opinion study: 48% of Americans believed a connection between Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda had been found; 22% believed WMD had been found

Post-9/11 media climate

After 9/11 (3,000 deaths), media unanimously accepted Bush's claims, ignoring international criticism such as from Pope John Paul II and Nelson Mandela; e.g. Darryl Worley's 2003 song Have You Forgotten: "Have you forgotten when those towers fell?"

Bush's pro-Israeli, anti-Saddam advisors

Douglas Feith (Secretary of Defence), Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defence) and Richard Perle (Chairman of the Defence Policy Advisory Board of the Pentagon) played significant roles in promoting the invasion

Oil money in the administration

The Bush administration received more electoral funding from oil companies than any other in American history ($1.5 million in 2000); many politicians had links to oil companies operating in Iraq, such as Vice President Dick Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton