Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath

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It is clear, however, that the United States and its partners have not done enough to create conditions in which such a development could take place. With the best of intentions, the United States toppled a vile, dangerous regime but has been unable to replace it with a stable entity. Mistakes in the Iraq operation cry out for improvements in the U.

In turn, these improvements will require major changes in the legislative and executive branches, as well as in interagency processes. A comprehensive narrative of the war is beyond the scope of this project. Many key actors have not yet given their sides of the story. Given classification problems, the role played by intelligence and information operations can only be partially dissected. There is sufficient information, however, to make preliminary conclusions, especially since the focal point here is on the major decisions made at the Presidential, interagency, Cabinet department, and theater levels, all of which are areas of relatively rich documentation.

The first four parts of this study will briefly analyze the context of the war and how the United States planned for it. About , arrived from the USA alone, with about 45, British soldiers, 2, Australian soldiers, and Polish soldiers. In preparation for the invasion, , U. According to George W. Prime Minister Tony Blair , the coalition aimed "to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction , to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism , and to free the Iraqi people.

On 15 February , a month before the invasion, there were worldwide protests against the Iraq War , including a rally of three million people in Rome, which the Guinness Book of Records listed as the largest ever anti-war rally. The invasion was preceded by an airstrike on the Presidential Palace in Baghdad on 20 March The following day, coalition forces launched an incursion into Basra Province from their massing point close to the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. While special forces launched an amphibious assault from the Persian Gulf to secure Basra and the surrounding petroleum fields, the main invasion army moved into southern Iraq, occupying the region and engaging in the Battle of Nasiriyah on 23 March.

Massive air strikes across the country and against Iraqi command-and-control threw the defending army into chaos and prevented an effective resistance. On 26 March, the rd Airborne Brigade was airdropped near the northern city of Kirkuk , where they joined forces with Kurdish rebels and fought several actions against the Iraqi Army to secure the northern part of the country. The main body of coalition forces continued their drive into the heart of Iraq and met with little resistance.

Most of the Iraqi military was quickly defeated and the coalition occupied Baghdad on 9 April. Other operations occurred against pockets of the Iraqi army, including the capture and occupation of Kirkuk on 10 April, and the attack on and capture of Tikrit on 15 April. Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the central leadership went into hiding as the coalition forces completed the occupation of the country.

On 1 May President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat operations: It was revealed that a biological weapons BW program in Iraq had begun in the early s with help from the U. The investigation concluded that there was no evidence the program had continued after the war.

This policy involved numerous economic sanctions by the UN Security Council ; the enforcement of Iraqi no-fly zones declared by the U. Iraqi military helicopters and planes regularly contested the no-fly zones. In October , removing the Iraqi government became official U. Enacted following the expulsion of UN weapons inspectors the preceding August after some had been accused of spying for the U.

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The campaign's express rationale was to hamper Saddam Hussein's government's ability to produce chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, but U. With the election of George W. Bush as president in , the U. The Republican Party's campaign platform in the election called for "full implementation" of the Iraq Liberation Act as "a starting point" in a plan to "remove" Saddam. Bush administration , Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said that an attack on Iraq had been planned since Bush's inauguration, and that the first United States National Security Council meeting involved discussion of an invasion.

O'Neill later backtracked, saying that these discussions were part of a continuation of foreign policy first put into place by the Clinton administration. Despite the Bush administration's stated interest in liberating Iraq, little formal movement towards an invasion occurred until the September 11 attacks. For example, the administration prepared Operation Desert Badger to respond aggressively if any Air Force pilot was shot down while flying over Iraq, but this did not happen. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dismissed National Security Agency NSA intercept data available by midday of the 11th that pointed to al-Qaeda 's culpability, and by mid-afternoon ordered the Pentagon to prepare plans for attacking Iraq.

Judge whether good enough hit Saddam Hussein at same time. Not only Osama bin Laden. Shortly after 11 September on 20 September , Bush addressed a joint session of Congress simulcast live to the world , and announced his new " War on Terror ". This announcement was accompanied by the doctrine of "pre-emptive" military action, later termed the Bush Doctrine. Allegations of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were made by some U. Government officials who asserted that a highly secretive relationship existed between Saddam and the radical Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda from to , specifically through a series of meetings reportedly involving the Iraqi Intelligence Service IIS.

Some Bush advisers favored an immediate invasion of Iraq, while others advocated building an international coalition and obtaining United Nations authorization. Bush eventually decided to seek UN authorization, while still reserving the option of invading without it. While there had been some earlier talk of action against Iraq, the Bush administration waited until September to call for action, with White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card saying, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.

After considerable debate, the UN Security Council adopted a compromise resolution, UN Security Council Resolution , which authorized the resumption of weapons inspections and promised "serious consequences" for non-compliance.

Security Council members France and Russia made clear that they did not consider these consequences to include the use of force to overthrow the Iraqi government. As of February , the IAEA "found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq"; the IAEA concluded that certain items which could have been used in nuclear enrichment centrifuges, such as aluminum tubes, were in fact intended for other uses.

In October , the U. Congress passed the " Iraq Resolution ". The resolution authorized the President to "use any means necessary" against Iraq. Americans polled in January widely favored further diplomacy over an invasion. Later that year, however, Americans began to agree with Bush's plan. Americans overwhelmingly believed Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction: Of those who thought Iraq had weapons sequestered somewhere, about half responded that said weapons would not be found in combat. Once on the ground, they prepared for the subsequent arrival of U. Army Special Forces to organize the Kurdish Peshmerga.

This battle was for control of the territory that was occupied by Ansar al-Islam. This battle resulted in the defeat of Ansar and the capture of a chemical weapons facility at Sargat. SAD teams also conducted missions behind enemy lines to identify leadership targets. These missions led to the initial air strikes against Saddam and his generals.

Although the strike against Saddam was unsuccessful in killing him, it effectively ended his ability to command and control his forces. Strikes against Iraq's generals were more successful and significantly degraded the Iraqi command's ability to react to, and maneuver against, the U. They managed to keep the northern divisions in place rather than allowing them to aid their colleagues against the U. In the State of the Union address , President Bush said "we know that Iraq, in the late s, had several mobile biological weapons labs".

His presentation to the UN Security Council , which contained a computer generated image of a "mobile biological weapons laboratory". However, this information was based on claims of Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed "Curveball" , an Iraqi emigrant living in Germany who later admitted that his claims had been false. Powell also presented evidence alleging Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda.

Opposition to the invasion coalesced in the worldwide 15 February anti-war protest that attracted between six and ten million people in more than cities, the largest such protest in human history according to the Guinness Book of World Records. This encounter was extremely controversial in Spain, even now remaining a very sensitive point for the Aznar government. In his 17 March address to the nation, Bush demanded that Saddam and his two sons, Uday and Qusay , surrender and leave Iraq, giving them a hour deadline. Unlike the first Gulf War, this war had no explicit UN authorisation.

The UK House of Commons held a debate on going to war on 18 March where the government motion was approved to In a passionate speech to the House of Commons after his resignation, he said, "What has come to trouble me is the suspicion that if the 'hanging chads' of Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected, we would not now be about to commit British troops to action in Iraq. I reported the conversation to senior levels of the state department and I was told to stand aside and they would handle it.

Bush administration because they allowed Saddam to remain in power, an outcome viewed as unacceptable. State Department that the Iraqis wanted to discuss the accusations that the country had weapons of mass destruction and ties with Al-Qaeda. Iraq also attempted to reach the U. Department of Defense 's Office of Special Plans. Hage, a resident of Beirut , had been recruited by the department to assist in the War on Terror.

He reported that Mohammed Nassif , a close aide to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad , had expressed frustrations about the difficulties of Syria contacting the United States, and had attempted to use him as an intermediary. In January , Hage met with the chief of Iraqi intelligence's foreign operations, Hassan al-Obeidi. Obeidi told Hage that Baghdad did not understand why they were being targeted, and that they had no WMDs.

He then made the offer for Washington to send in FBI agents to confirm this. He additionally offered petroleum concessions, but stopped short of having Saddam give up power, instead suggesting that elections could be held in two years. Later, Obeidi suggested that Hage travel to Baghdad for talks; he accepted. He was offered top priority to U. They also wished to meet with high-ranking U. On 19 February, Hage faxed Maloof his report of the trip.

Maloof reports having brought the proposal to Jaymie Duran. The Pentagon denies that either Wolfowitz or Rumsfeld, Duran's bosses, were aware of the plan. Duran responded "Mike, working this. Keep this close hold. A few days later, he informed Hage that Washington refused to let him meet with Habbush to discuss the offer Hage stated that Perle's response was "that the consensus in Washington was it was a no-go".

2003 invasion of Iraq

George Bush, speaking in October , said that "The stated policy of the United States is regime change. However, if Saddam were to meet all the conditions of the United Nations, the conditions that I have described very clearly in terms that everybody can understand, that in itself will signal the regime has changed". In September , Tony Blair stated, in an answer to a parliamentary question, that "Regime change in Iraq would be a wonderful thing.

That is not the purpose of our action; our purpose is to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction Now I happen to believe the regime of Saddam is a very brutal and repressive regime, I think it does enormous damage to the Iraqi people At a press conference on 31 January , Bush again reiterated that the single trigger for the invasion would be Iraq's failure to disarm, "Saddam Hussein must understand that if he does not disarm, for the sake of peace, we, along with others, will go disarm Saddam Hussein.

As Blair made clear in a statement to the House of Commons, "I detest his regime. But even now he can save it by complying with the UN's demand. Even now, we are prepared to go the extra step to achieve disarmament peacefully.

Additional justifications used at various times included Iraqi violation of UN resolutions, the Iraqi government's repression of its citizens, and Iraqi violations of the cease-fire. The main allegations were: While it never made an explicit connection between Iraq and the 11 September attacks, the George W. Bush administration repeatedly insinuated a link, thereby creating a false impression for the U. Grand jury testimony from the World Trade Center bombing trials cited numerous direct linkages from the bombers to Baghdad and Department 13 of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in that initial attack marking the second anniversary to vindicate the surrender of Iraqi armed forces in Operation Desert Storm.

For example, The Washington Post has noted that,. While not explicitly declaring Iraqi culpability in the September 11, , terrorist attacks, administration officials did, at various times, imply a link. In late , Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed" that attack mastermind Mohamed Atta had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official.

Second, to identify, isolate and eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Third, to search for, to capture and to drive out terrorists from that country. Fourth, to collect such intelligence as we can related to terrorist networks. Fifth, to collect such intelligence as we can related to the global network of illicit weapons of mass destruction.

Sixth, to end sanctions and to immediately deliver humanitarian support to the displaced and to many needy Iraqi citizens. Seventh, to secure Iraq's oil fields and resources, which belong to the Iraqi people. And last, to help the Iraqi people create conditions for a transition to a representative self-government.

The BBC has also noted that, while President Bush "never directly accused the former Iraqi leader of having a hand in the attacks on New York and Washington", he "repeatedly associated the two in keynote addresses delivered since 11 September", adding that "Senior members of his administration have similarly conflated the two. And we know that after September 11, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

Also in September , The Boston Globe reported that "Vice President Dick Cheney, anxious to defend the White House foreign policy amid ongoing violence in Iraq, stunned intelligence analysts and even members of his own administration this week by failing to dismiss a widely discredited claim: Throughout , the Bush administration insisted that removing Saddam from power to restore international peace and security was a major goal.

The principal stated justifications for this policy of "regime change" were that Iraq's continuing production of weapons of mass destruction and known ties to terrorist organizations , as well as Iraq's continued violations of UN Security Council resolutions, amounted to a threat to the U. The Bush administration's overall rationale for the invasion of Iraq was presented in detail by U.

In summary, he stated,. We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction; he's determined to make more. Given Saddam Hussein's history of aggression The United States will not and cannot run that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post—September 11 world.

Since the invasion, the U. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours. In September , the Bush administration said attempts by Iraq to acquire thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes pointed to a clandestine program to make enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. Powell, in his address to the UN Security Council just before the war, referred to the aluminum tubes. A report released by the Institute for Science and International Security in , however, reported that it was highly unlikely that the tubes could be used to enrich uranium.

Powell later admitted he had presented an inaccurate case to the United Nations on Iraqi weapons, based on sourcing that was wrong and in some cases "deliberately misleading. The Bush administration asserted that the Saddam government had sought to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger. These documents were dismissed by the IAEA as forgeries, with the concurrence in that judgment of outside experts. At the time, a US official stated that the evidence was submitted to the IAEA without knowledge of its provenance and characterized any mistakes as "more likely due to incompetence not malice".

In October , a few days before the US Senate vote on the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution , about 75 senators were told in closed session that the Iraqi government had the means of delivering biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction by unmanned aerial vehicle UAV drones that could be launched from ships off the US' Atlantic coast to attack US eastern seaboard cities.

As evidence supporting U. Citing the Iraq Liberation Act of , the resolution reiterated that it should be the policy of the United States to remove the Saddam Hussein regime and promote a democratic replacement. The resolution "supported" and "encouraged" diplomatic efforts by President George W.

Bush to "strictly enforce through the U.

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Security Council all relevant Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq" and "obtain prompt and decisive action by the Security Council to ensure that Iraq abandons its strategy of delay, evasion, and noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies with all relevant Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq. The legality of the invasion of Iraq has been challenged since its inception on a number of fronts, and several prominent supporters of the invasion in all the invading nations have publicly and privately cast doubt on its legality.

It has been argued that the invasion was fully legal because authorization was implied by the United Nations Security Council. On Thursday 20 November , an article published in the Guardian alleged that Richard Perle , a senior member of the administration's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee , conceded that the invasion was illegal but still justified. The most relevant to this issue is Resolution , passed on 29 November It authorizes "member states co-operating with the Government of Kuwait Resolution was most prominent during the run up to the war and formed the main backdrop for Secretary of State Colin Powell 's address to the Security Council one month before the invasion.

At the same time, Bush Administration officials advanced a parallel legal argument using the earlier resolutions, which authorized force in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Under this reasoning, by failing to disarm and submit to weapons inspections, Iraq was in violation of U. Security Council Resolutions and , and the U. Critics and proponents of the legal rationale based on the U. In February , Luis Moreno Ocampo , the lead prosecutor for the International Criminal Court , reported that he had received separate communications regarding the legality of the war, many of which concerned British participation in the invasion.

Moreno Ocampo explained that he could only consider issues related to conduct during the war and not to its underlying legality as a possible crime of aggression because no provision had yet been adopted which "defines the crime and sets out the conditions under which the Court may exercise jurisdiction with respect to it. He charged Cheney with manipulating the evidence of Iraq's weapons program, deceiving the nation about Iraq's connection to al-Qaeda, and threatening aggression against Iran in violation of the United Nations Charter.

The United Kingdom military operation was named Operation Telic. In November , President George W. Thereafter, the Bush administration briefly used the term Coalition of the Willing to refer to the countries who supported, militarily or verbally, the military action in Iraq and subsequent military presence in post-invasion Iraq since The original list prepared in March included 49 members. Six members have no military, meaning that they withheld troops completely.

Approximately , soldiers from the United States, 45, British soldiers, 2, Australian soldiers and Polish soldiers from the special forces unit GROM were sent to Kuwait for the invasion.

Joseph J. Collins

Army , ,; U. Army Reserve , 10,; and Army National Guard , 8, Plans for opening a second front in the north were severely hampered when Turkey refused the use of its territory for such purposes. Once on the ground they prepared for the subsequent arrival of US military forces. SAD teams then combined with U. This joint team combined to defeat Ansar al-Islam , an ally of Al Qaida, in a battle in the northeast corner of Iraq. SAD teams also conducted high-risk special reconnaissance missions behind Iraqi lines to identify senior leadership targets.

These missions led to the initial strikes against Saddam Hussein and his key generals. Although the initial strikes against Saddam were unsuccessful in killing the dictator or his generals, they were successful in effectively ending the ability to command and control Iraqi forces. Other strikes against key generals were successful and significantly degraded the command's ability to react to and maneuver against the U. Army Special Forces joint teams and the Kurdish Peshmerga constituted the entire northern force against government forces during the invasion. Their efforts kept the 5th Corps of the Iraqi army in place to defend against the Kurds rather than moving to contest the coalition force.

According to General Tommy Franks , April Fool , an American officer working undercover as a diplomat, was approached by an Iraqi intelligence agent. April Fool then sold to the Iraqi false "top secret" invasion plans provided by Franks' team.

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This deception misled the Iraqi military into deploying major forces in northern and western Iraq in anticipation of attacks by way of Turkey or Jordan , which never took place. This greatly reduced the defensive capacity in the rest of Iraq and facilitated the actual attacks via Kuwait and the Persian Gulf in the southeast. The number of personnel in the Iraqi military before the war was uncertain, but it was believed to have been poorly equipped.

Another estimate numbers the Army and Republican Guard at between , and , and 50, to 80,, respectively, [] and the paramilitary between 20, and 40, The Iraqi Air Force and Navy played a negligible role in the conflict. During the invasion, foreign volunteers traveled to Iraq from Syria and took part in the fighting, usually under the command of the Fedayeen Saddam. It is not known for certain how many foreign fighters fought in Iraq in , however, intelligence officers of the U.

In addition, the Kurdish Islamist militant group Ansar al-Islam controlled a small section of northern Iraq in an area outside of Saddam Hussein's control. Ansar al-Islam had been fighting against secular Kurdish forces since At the time of the invasion they fielded about to fighters. Since the Gulf War , the U. Other countries, notably Russia and China, also condemned the zones as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. A change in enforcement tactics was acknowledged at the time, but it was not made public that this was part of a plan known as Operation Southern Focus.

The amount of ordnance dropped on Iraqi positions by Coalition aircraft in and was less than in and which was during the Clinton administration. However, information obtained by the UK Liberal Democrats showed that the UK dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of as they did during the whole of The tonnage of UK bombs dropped increased from 0 in March and 0. Congress' 11 October authorization of the invasion.

According to an editorial in New Statesman this was "Located at the furthest extreme of the southern no-fly zone, far away from the areas that needed to be patrolled to prevent attacks on the Shias, it was destroyed not because it was a threat to the patrols, but to allow allied special forces operating from Jordan to enter Iraq undetected. Tommy Franks , who commanded the invasion of Iraq, has since admitted that the bombing was designed to "degrade" Iraqi air defences in the same way as the air attacks that began the Gulf War. These "spikes of activity" were, in the words of then British Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon , designed to 'put pressure on the Iraqi regime' or, as The Times reported, to "provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war".

In this respect, as provocations designed to start a war, leaked British Foreign Office legal advice concluded that such attacks were illegal under international law. Another attempt at provoking the war was mentioned in a leaked memo from a meeting between George W. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach. Bush gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave the country, along with his sons Uday and Qusay, or face war.

On the night of 17 March , the majority of B and D squadron British 22nd SAS Regiment , who were designated as Task Force 14, crossed the border from Jordan to conduct a ground assault on a suspected chemical munitions site at a water-treatment plant in the city of al-Qa'im. It had been reported that the site might have been a SCUD missile launch site or a depot; an SAS officer was quoted by author Mark Nicol as saying "it was a location where missiles had been fired at Israel in the past, and a site of strategic importance for WMD material.

Following their insertion, D squadron established a patrol laager at a remote location outside al-Qa'im and awaited the arrival of B squadron, who had driven overland from Jordan. Their approach to the plant was compromised, and a firefight developed which ended in one 'pinkie' having to be abandoned and destroyed, repeated attempts to assault the plant were halted, leading the SAS to call in an air strike which silenced the opposition.

In the early morning of 19 March , U. One bomb missed the compound entirely and the other three missed their target, landing on the other side of the wall of the palace compound.

On 19 March at In the space of seven hours, more than 70 sites were destroyed, effectively depriving the Iraqi military of any early warning of the coming invasion. On 20 March at approximately Bush announced that he had ordered an "attack of opportunity" against targets in Iraq. Before the invasion, many observers had expected a lengthy campaign of aerial bombing before any ground action, taking as examples the Persian Gulf War or the invasion of Afghanistan.

The assumption was that superior mobility and coordination of Coalition forces would allow them to attack the heart of the Iraqi command structure and destroy it in a short time, and that this would minimize civilian deaths and damage to infrastructure. It was expected that the elimination of the leadership would lead to the collapse of the Iraqi Forces and the government, and that much of the population would support the invaders once the government had been weakened. Occupation of cities and attacks on peripheral military units were viewed as undesirable distractions. Following Turkey 's decision to deny any official use of its territory, the Coalition was forced to modify the planned simultaneous attack from north and south.

Army managed to build and lead the Kurdish Peshmerga into an effective force and assault for the North. The primary bases for the invasion were in Kuwait and other Persian Gulf nations. One result of this was that one of the divisions intended for the invasion was forced to relocate and was unable to take part in the invasion until well into the war. Many observers felt that the Coalition devoted sufficient numbers of troops to the invasion, but too many were withdrawn after it ended, and that the failure to occupy cities put them at a major disadvantage in achieving security and order throughout the country when local support failed to meet expectations.

The invasion was swift, leading to the collapse of the Iraqi government and the military of Iraq in about three weeks. The oil infrastructure of Iraq was rapidly seized and secured with limited damage in that time. Securing the oil infrastructure was considered of great importance. In the Gulf War, while retreating from Kuwait, the Iraqi army had set many oil wells on fire in an attempt to disguise troop movements and to distract Coalition forces.

Before the invasion, Iraqi forces had mined some oil wells around Basra and the Al-Faw peninsula with explosives. Coalition troops launched an air and amphibious assault on the Al-Faw peninsula during the closing hours of 19 March to secure the oil fields there; the amphibious assault was supported by warships of the Royal Navy , Polish Navy , and Royal Australian Navy. In the meantime, Royal Air Force Tornados from 9 and Squadrons attacked the radar defence systems protecting Baghdad, but lost a Tornado on 22 March along with the pilot and navigator Flight Lieutenant Kevin Main and Flight Lieutenant Dave Williams , shot down by an American Patriot missile as they returned to their airbase in Kuwait.

There they met with heavy resistance by Iraqi troops. A total of 14 Coalition troops and 30—40 Iraqi troops were killed, and Iraqis taken prisoner. The British Army 's 16 Air Assault Brigade also secured the oil fields in southern Iraq in places like Rumaila while the Polish commandos captured offshore oil platforms near the port, preventing their destruction. Despite the rapid advance of the invasion forces, some 44 oil wells were destroyed and set ablaze by Iraqi explosives or by incidental fire.

However, the wells were quickly capped and the fires put out, preventing the ecological damage and loss of oil production capacity that had occurred at the end of the Gulf War. In keeping with the rapid advance plan, the U. The missile was intercepted and shot down by a Patriot missile seconds before hitting the complex. Subsequently, two A Warthogs bombed the missile launcher. Initially, the 1st Marine Division United States fought through the Rumaila oil fields , and moved north to Nasiriyah —a moderate-sized, Shi'ite-dominated city with important strategic significance as a major road junction and its proximity to nearby Talil Airfield.

It was also situated near a number of strategically important bridges over the Euphrates River. The city was defended by a mix of regular Iraqi army units, Ba'ath loyalists, and Fedayeen from both Iraq and abroad. The United States Army 3rd Infantry Division defeated Iraqi forces entrenched in and around the airfield and bypassed the city to the west. On 23 March, a convoy from the 3rd Infantry Division, including the female American soldiers Jessica Lynch , Shoshana Johnson , and Lori Piestewa , was ambushed after taking a wrong turn into the city.

Piestewa, who was from Tuba City , Arizona , and an enrolled member of the Hopi Tribe, was believed to have been the first Native American woman killed in combat in a foreign war. Marines from the Second Marine Division entered Nasiriyah in force, facing heavy resistance as they moved to secure two major bridges in the city. Several Marines were killed during a firefight with Fedayeen in the urban fighting.

At the Saddam Canal, another 18 Marines were killed in heavy fighting with Iraqi soldiers. An Air Force A was involved in a case of friendly fire that resulted in the death of six Marines when it accidentally attacked an American amphibious vehicle. Two other vehicles were destroyed when a barrage of RPG and small arms fire killed most of the Marines inside. The bridges were secured and the Second Marine division set up a perimeter around the city.

Iraqi reinforcements from Kut launched several counterattacks. The Marines managed to repel them using indirect fire and close air support. The last Iraqi attack was beaten off at dawn. The battalion estimated that — Iraqi soldiers were killed, without a single U. Nasiriyah was declared secure, but attacks by Iraqi Fedayeen continued. These attacks were uncoordinated, and resulted in firefights in which large numbers of Fedayeen were killed. Because of Nasiriyah's strategic position as a road junction, significant gridlock occurred as U. Additional troops and supplies were soon brought through this forward operating base.

The st Airborne Division continued its attack north in support of the 3rd Infantry Division. By 28 March, a severe sand storm slowed the Coalition advance as the 3rd Infantry Division halted its northward drive halfway between Najaf and Karbala. Air operations by helicopters, poised to bring reinforcements from the st Airborne, were blocked for three days. There was particularly heavy fighting in and around the bridge near the town of Kufl.

Another fierce battle was at Najaf , where U. It started with U. AH Apache helicopter gunships setting out on a mission to attack Republican Guard armored units; while flying low the Apaches came under heavy anti-aircraft, small arms, and RPG fire which heavily damaged many helicopters and shot one down, frustrating the attack. The 1st Brigade Combat Team's air defense battery moved in and after heavy fighting with entrenched Iraqi Fedayeen seized a strategic bridge in Najaf, known as "Objective Jenkins".

They then came under fierce counterattacks by Iraqi forces and Fedayeen, who failed to dislodge U. After 36 hours of combat at the bridge at Najaf, the Iraqis were defeated, and the key bridge was secured, isolating Najaf from the north. Report on the U. Committee on Foreign Relations Date: You might also like. Title from web page viewed Aug. Internet at the CPA web site.

Office of the Inspector General Date: Issues for include insert available under the quarterly reports "Infographics" section; previous reports contain insert material within each report under Photo, Print, Drawing Snow job 1 drawing: Editorial cartoon drawing shows a man, David Kay? Photo, Print, Drawing Rumsfeld, needing a cultural interpreter Editorial cartoon drawing shows Donald Rumsfeld, dressed like a tourist, correcting an Arab who interprets "Liberation" as "Occupation.

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