This CNN site will help you with some information … you can then complete your OWN assignment. If you turn in what we write, that’s plagiarism … aka CHEATING!

So, look here and do your own work!

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/

(By the way, my “thumbs down” on the above was NOT because of the answer itself … there was quite a bit of interesting commentary in it. But for the fact that the poster did your work for you, thus enabling you to cheat.)

We fought the Taliban in Afghanistan, tried to bomb the caves of Tora Bora to get Osama. We used bunker busters, but nobody knows if he is dead. Pakistan provided refuge for terrorists along Afghan border.

We believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people, the Kurdish minority. Thousands had died, we knew he had chemicals, possibly nuclear warheads. We feared he would aid terrorists by providing these weapons. Many nukes had disappeared from the former Soviet Union. Where are the nukes (we still don’t know)

Then we eliminated Saddam Hussein. He had killed many, he had rape and torture rooms for his own people. He was widely hated because he ruled with an iron hand.

Too late, we learned that the reason Saddam ruled with an iron hand is because the Iraqis are all nutjobs who will kill one another at the drop of a hat. So, as soon as Saddam was gone, civil war started breaking out. Really it was a proxy war between Al-Qaeda (backing the Sunnis) and Iran (backing the Shiites) Iran has promised to take over Iraq if we leave in order to “fill the power vacuum”. If you are younger than twenty five, you probably don’t remember Iran, and the hostage crisis, and the Ayatollah and the nutjob religious fanatic murdering lunatics that lead Iran. Iran is not good. Iran is really bad, much worse than Iraq. So anyway, unless somebody drops a nuke on the Middle East sometime soon, we will be dealing with these people for a long, long time.