The War Against Iraq

The War Against Iraq Other titles in the Lucent Terrorism Library are: America Under Attack: Primary Sources America Under Attack: September 11, 2001 The History of Terrorism Terrorists and Terrorist Groups Contents FOREWORD 8 INTRODUCTION Winning the Peace 10 CHAPTER 1 Iraq’s History of Aggression and Arms 14 CHAPTER 2 The Axis of Evil and Diplomatic Efforts to Disarm Iraq 28 CHAPTER 3 Shock and Awe in Twenty-Six Days 43 CHAPTER 4 The Aftermath of War in Iraq 60 CHAPTER 5 Challenges for the New Iraq 74 Notes Chronology For Further Reading Works Consulted Index Picture Credits About the Author 91 95 98 100 104 111 112 Foreword I t was the bloodiest day in American history since the battle of Antietam during the Civil War—a day in which everything about the nation would change forever. People, when speaking of the country, would henceforth specify “before September 11” or “after September 11.” It was as if, on that Tuesday morning, the borders had suddenly shifted to include Canada and Mexico, or as if the official language of the United States had changed. The difference between “before” and “after” was that pronounced. That Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, was the day that Americans began to learn firsthand about terrorism, as first one fuel-heavy commercial airliner, and then a second, hit New York’s World Trade Towers—sending them thundering to the ground in a firestorm of smoke and ash.A third airliner was flown into a wall of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a fourth was apparently wrestled away from terrorists before it could be steered into another building. By the time the explosions and collapses had stopped and the fires had been extinguished, more than three thousand Americans had died. Film clips and photographs showed the horror of that day. Trade Center workers could be seen leaping to their 8 deaths from seventy, eighty, ninety floors up rather than endure the 1,000degree temperatures within the towers. New Yorkers who had thought they were going to work were caught on film desperately racing the other way to escape the wall of dust and debris that rolled down the streets of lower Manhattan. Photographs showed badly burned Pentagon secretaries and frustrated rescue workers. Later pictures would show huge fire engines buried under the rubble. It was not the first time America had been the target of terrorists. The same World Trade Center had been targeted in 1993 by Islamic terrorists, but the results had been negligible. The worst of such acts on American soil came in 1995 at the hands of a homegrown terrorist whose hatred for the government led to the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. The blast killed 168 people—19 of them children. But the September 11 attacks were far different. It was terror on a frighteningly well-planned, larger scale, carried out by nineteen men from the Middle East whose hatred of the United States drove them to the most appalling suicide mission the world had ever witnessed. As one U.S. intelligence officer told a CNN reporter,“These guys turned air- Foreword planes into weapons of mass destruction,landmarks familiar to all of us into mass graves.” Some observers say that September 11 may always be remembered as the date that the people of the United States finally came face to face with terrorism.“You’ve been relatively sheltered from terrorism,” says an Israeli terrorism expert.“You hear about it