Current War With Iraq

¶ … Persian Gulf War of 1991 aimed to stop the invasion and occupation of Kuwait by Iraqi forces. Ordered by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the military action aimed to take control of the small country's immense oil reserves. By the time U.S. President George Bush declared a cease-fire on February 28, 1991, Iraqi forces had already fallen.

As part of the Gulf War treaties, the trade embargo on Iraq, sanctioned by the United Nations when Iraq first invaded Kuwait, was not lifted and a UN special commission was assigned to oversee the destruction of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including medium-range missiles and chemical and biological weapons as well as the facilities in which they were developed. Nevertheless, UN military forces were withdrawn from Iraq and Hussein was not pushed out of power.

While the current war on Iraq has been called the "War for Iraqi Freedom," the events leading up to it suggest that the war is not a result of concern over the freedom and rights of the Iraqi people, but a result of Iraq's continued noncompliance with UN resolutions and international fear of the possibility of WMD in the hands of Hussein and his followers.

Despite the UN provisions set forth at the end of the Persian Gulf War, Iraq has continually worked to hinder UN weapons inspections over the past twelve years. In the end, the UN, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and others came to believe that Iraq has rebuilt some of its facilities for developing WMD. In November of 2002, the UN Security Council unanimously voted through Resolution 1441 to give Iraq one final opportunity to comply with disarmament obligations.

Iraq was given seven days to notify the council of its intent to comply and thirty days to present the council with a complete list of its current efforts to develop WMD. Additionally, pending agreement to these conditions, the UN would resume unfettered inspections forty-five days later. While Iraq did present the UN with a report, it continued to hinder efforts and gave little sign of compliance with the entirety of the resolution. On February 5, 2003, U.S.

Secretary of State Colin Powell presented evidence to the UN that Iraq had not been working towards disarmament and was, in fact, developing and holding WMD. Moreover, Powell sought to prove ties between Hussein's government and the al-Qaida terrorist network responsible for the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center. Powell's presentation was met with mixed reactions from the international community, but the U.S. And Britain soon began efforts to convince countries to support a resolution to give Iraq an ultimatum: disarm or face war.

The security council continued to search for peaceful and diplomatic solutions to Iraqi compliance, but U.S. President George W. Bush issued his own ultimatum to Hussein on March 17, 2003: leave Iraq or face war. Hussein was given a forty-eight hour deadline, but before that deadline even passed, he flatly refused to leave, saying he was ready to meet the consequences.

War was launched soon after, being called the "War for Iraqi Freedom." While the Iraqi people do live under a dictatorship, the war is not a war to free the Iraqi people. Instead, it is a response to Iraq's continued failure to comply not only with Gulf War treaty resolutions set over a decarde ago, but countless efforts since then. The UN and the international community have constantly worked to stop the development and stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction throughout the world and specifically in Iraq.

The current war on Iraq is to remove the alleged "direct threat" that Iraq poses with its development and housing of WMD. Iraq has used.