The Iraq war’s cause was to ensure that the Iraqi people would establish a government and to get Saddam Hussein out of Iraq. So on June 10th 2002 the first invasion, there they scouted the area. At 5:34 AM Baghdad time on March 20, 2003 (9:34 p.m., March 19 EST) the military invasion of Iraq began. The invasion was a quick and decisive operation encountering major resistance, though not what the US, British and other forces expected. The Iraqi regime had prepared to fight both a conventional and irregular war at the same time, conceding territory when faced with superior conventional forces, largely armored, but launching smaller scale attacks in the rear using fighters dressed in civilian and paramilitary clothes. This achieved some temporary successes and created unexpected challenges for the invading forces, especially the US military. In the north, OIF-1 used the largest special operations force since the successful attack on the Taliban government of Afghanistan just over a year earlier. The Iraqi army was quickly overwhelmed in each engagement it faced with US forces, with the elite Fedayeen Saddam putting up strong, sometimes suicidal, resistance before melting away into the civilian population. On April 9 Baghdad fell, ending President Hussein's 24-year rule. US forces seized the deserted Ba'ath Party ministries and stage-managed the tearing down of a huge iron statue of Hussein, photos and video of which became symbolic of the event, although later controversial. In November 2008, Iraqi protesters staged a similar stomping on and burning of an effigy of George W. Bush. The abrupt fall of Baghdad was accompanied by a widespread outpouring of gratitude toward the invaders, but also massive civil disorder, including the looting of public and government buildings and drastically increased crime.
According to the Pentagon, 250,000 short tons (230,000 t) (of 650,000 short tons (590,000 t) total) of ordnance was looted, providing a significant source of ammunition for the Iraqi insurgency. The invasion phase concluded when Tikrit, Hussein's home town, fell with little resistance to the US Marines of Task Force Tripoli and on April 15 the coalition declared the invasion effectively over.
No comments:
Post a Comment