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Analysis from InfoPlease Essay I am going to present to you through out this paper the history of the Iraq War and the many opposing views as to why the war should of never been, you will find many quotes and facts. Analysis from InfoPlease â€Å"The Second Persian Gulf War,. also known as the Iraq War, Mar. –Apr. , 2003, was a largely U. S. -British invasion of Iraq. In many ways the final, delayed campaign of the First Persian Gulf War, it arose in part because the Iraqi government failed to cooperate fully with UN weapons inspections in the years following the first conflict. † (Infoplease) â€Å"The election of George W. Bush to the U. S. presidency returned to government many officials from his fathers administration who had favored removing Saddam Hussein from power in the first war. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the United States moved toward a doctrine of first-strike, pre-emptive war to eliminate threats to national security. As early as Oct. , 2001, U. S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld publicly suggested that military action against Iraq was possible, and in November President Bush asked Rumsfeld to undertake a war-plan review. In Jan. , 2002, President Bush accused Iraq. along with North Korea and Iran, as being part of â€Å"an axis of evil,† and with the Taliban forced from power in Afghanistan in early 2002, the administrations attention turned to Iraq. † (Infoplease) â€Å"Accusing Iraq of failing to abide by the terms of the 1991 cease-fire (by developing and possessing weapons of mass destruction and by refusing to cooperate with UN weapons inspections) and of supporting terrorism, the president and other officials suggested that the â€Å"war on terrorism† might be expanded to include Iraq and became more forceful in their denunciations of Iraq for resisting UN arms inspections, called for â€Å"regime change† in Iraq, and leaked news of 2 military planning for war. President Bush also called on the United Nations to act forcefully against Iraq or risk becoming â€Å"irrelevant. † As a result, Iraq announced in Sept. , 2002, that UN inspectors could return, but Iraqi slowness to agree on inspection terms and U. S. insistence on stricter conditions for Iraqi compliance stalled the inspectors return. † (Infoplease) â€Å"In October, Congress approved the use of force against Iraq, and in November the Security Council passed a resolution offering Iraq a â€Å"final opportunity† to cooperate on arms inspections. A strict inspections timetable was established, and active Iraqi compliance insisted on. Inspections resumed in late November. A December declaration by Iraq that it had no weapons of mass destruction was generally regarded as incomplete and uninformative, but by Jan. , 2003, UN inspectors had found no evidence of forbidden weapons programs. However, they also indicated that Iraq was not actively cooperating with their efforts to determine if previously known or suspected weapons had been destroyed and weapons programs had been ended. Despite much international opposition, including increasingly rancorous objections from France, Germany, and Russia, the United States and Britain continued their military buildup in areas near Iraq, insisting that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction. Turkey, which the allies hoped to use as a base for a northern front in Iraq, refused to allow use of its territory, but most Anglo-American forces were in place in Kuwait and other locations by March. After failing to win the explicit UN Security Council approval desired by Britain (because Britons were otherwise largely opposed to war), President Bush issued an ultimatum to Iraqi president Hussein on Mar. 17, and two days later the war began with an airstrike against Hussein and the Iraqi leadership. Ground forces (almost exclusively Anglo-American and significantly smaller than the large international force assembled in the first war) began invading the following day, surging primarily toward Baghdad, the southern oil fields, and port facilities; a northern front was opened by Kurdish and airborne Anglo-American forces late in March. † (Infoplease) 3 â€Å"By mid-April, 2003, Husseins army and government had collapsed, he himself had disappeared, and the allies were largely in control of the major Iraqi cities. The allies gradually turned their attention to the rebuilding of Iraq and the establishment of a new Iraqi government, but progress toward that end was hampered by lawlessness, especially in Baghdad, where widespread looting initially had been tolerated by U. S. forces. † (Infoplease) â€Å"On May 1, President Bush declared victory in the war against Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction, however, were found, leading to charges that U. S. and British leaders had exaggerated the Iraqi biological and chemical threat in order to justify the war. Hussein was captured in Dec. , 2003. Subsequently, much of the intelligence used to justify the war was criticized as faulty by U. S. and British investigative bodies, and the U. S. -led occupation forces struggled into 2005 with Islamic insurgencies that military and civilian planners had failed to foresee. † (Infoplease)