States was not going to help the rebels, Husayn’s
elite Revolutionary Guard acted with deadly force
to end the rebellion. In less than two weeks, it
was completely smashed. Estimates indicate that
as many as 100,000 Kurds and 130,000 Shiis had
been killed in the uprising alone. Great damage
was done to Shii cities, towns, and shrines in the
south as well as to Kurdish population centers in
the north.
ThE GulF WAr OF 2003–
(AlSO CAllED ThE SECOND GulF WAr
AND OpErATION IrAQI FrEEDOM)
This war, which is ongoing at this writing (August
2008), consists of two phases. Although targets
in southern Iraq were subject to periodic aerial
bombings by American warplanes in 2002, the
first phase of the war proper began on March 20,
2003. It opened with massive “shock-and-awe”
aerial attacks and a full-scale ground invasion
northward from Kuwait by a coalition force com-
posed mainly of U.S. and British troops. Kurdish
militias joined with U.S. Special Forces to secure
territory in northern Iraq. The invasion force
achieved a quick victory on the battlefield and
took control of Baghdad on April 9, overthrow-
ing the b
aath
p
arty
–controlled government of
Saddam Husayn. The second phase of the conflict
involved a U.S.-led occupation of the country
and a largely low-intensity war against loosely
organized Iraqi resistance fighters and a small but
deadly force of foreign radical Muslims who infil-
trated the country during the occupation to fight
the Americans. During this phase, governance of
the country shifted from a Provisional Coalition
Authority headed by an American administrator
(Paul Bremer) to an interim Iraqi government and
then to an elected government based on a new
democratic constitution. The new government
had majority Shii representation for the first time
in Iraq’s modern history. However, significant
numbers of Iraqis, most of them disenfranchised
Sunni Arabs, did not accept the legitimacy of this
government. There have been numerous attacks
on civilians by a variety of militias and Muslim
jihadists, leading some observers to conclude that
this second phase of the war has actually become
a civil war between the Sunni Arab minority and
the Shii majority. Altogether, the war and occu-
pation have exacted a high toll from the Iraqi
people—more than 100,000 lives lost, many more
injured, up to 4 million Iraqi
reFUgees
, and bil-
lions of dollars of damage done to the infrastruc-
ture and the economy.
This war, unlike the previous Gulf wars, was
not caused by an overt act of Iraqi aggression.
Rather, it was caused by a combination of several
factors, including a perceived threat that Iraq might
act aggressively (it had violated 17 UN Security
Council resolutions). A small group of U.S. policy
makers and commentators, now known as the
Neocons (an abbreviation of “Neoconservatives”),
were unhappy with the outcome of the 1990–91
Gulf War because they had wanted to see Saddam
Husayn’s government completely removed from
power in order to create a Middle East that was
more favorable to American strategic interests.
They met periodically with a group of Iraqi exiles,
known collectively as the Iraqi National Congress
(INC), and lobbied in Washington for bringing
about “regime change” in Iraq during the latter
part of the 1990s. As part of their strategy, they
promoted continuation of the UN-authorized
embargo, even though many countries favored
normalizing relations with Iraq and a UN human
rights agency estimated that as many as 500,000
Iraqi children had died as a result of the embargo
during the first 10 years that it was in effect.
The election of George W. Bush as president
in 2000 brought many of the Neocons into power,
so immediately after the terrorist attacks of Sep-
tember 11, 2001, concrete steps were taken for
going to war against Iraq as part of a global “war
against terrorism.” Even though there was no Iraqi
involvement in the 9/11 attacks, Bush administra-
tion officials argued that with its weapons of mass
destruction, it posed an imminent threat to the
United States and its allies, despite the absence
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