Saddam Hussein's Regime

UN Management and International Attitudes

• Understanding the UN's strategy towards Iraq explains why international unity eventually collapsed into bitter disagreement. The initial approach was containment, a policy designed to keep Saddam "in a box" and prevent him from rebuilding his military.
• This strategy relied heavily on economic sanctions, starting with Resolution 661 in 1990. The embargo caused Iraq's GDP to plummet by 64% and food inflation to hit 2,000%, leading to massive civilian suffering that Saddam used as anti-Western propaganda.
• To ease this crisis, the UN introduced the Oil-for-Food Programme (Resolution 986), allowing Iraq to sell oil via a secure UN escrow account to buy food and medicine. This successfully raised daily caloric intake for civilians while keeping military funds restricted.
• However, international consensus began to fracture over Regime Change and weapons inspections. In November 2002, Resolution 1441 unanimously declared Iraq in material breach of its disarmament obligations.
• The UN monitoring body, UNMOVIC, conducted over 700 inspections but found no active weapons programs, discovering only Al-Samoud 2 missiles that exceeded permitted ranges. This mixed evidence caused a deep split in the international community.
• The "Coalition of the Willing" (US, UK, Spain, Australia) argued Resolution 1441 provided automatic legal authority for war. Conversely, the "Triple Opposition" (France, Russia, Germany) argued a second UN resolution was legally required and threatened to use their vetoes to stop an invasion.

The Debate Over WMDs and Al-Qaeda

• Intelligence reports are usually highly objective, but the evidence used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq was fiercely debated, politicized, and ultimately deeply flawed. The US and UK governments relied on two main patterns of evidence: links to terrorism and weapons programs.
• The argument for terrorism links was tied to the post-9/11 "War on Terror" and the Bush Doctrine, which advocated for preemptive strikes against "rogue states". A key piece of evidence was the "Prague Meeting claim", alleging a 9/11 hijacker met Iraqi intelligence, though this was later completely debunked by the CIA and FBI.
• The argument regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) was much stronger legally, as it focused on disarmament rather than terror. The UK government published the September Dossier in 2002, notoriously claiming Iraq could deploy WMDs within 45 minutes.
• However, public trust collapsed when the government released the 2003 "Dodgy Dossier", which was discovered to be plagiarised from a 12-year-old student thesis.
• Post-invasion investigations revealed a massive intelligence failure. The 2004 Butler Report found that intelligence suffered from "groupthink" and was presented with "unwarranted certainty".
• The Iraq Survey Group definitively concluded in 2004 that Iraq possessed no active WMD stockpiles or programs at the time of the invasion. Following the invasion, the controversial policy of De-Ba'athification removed all Ba'ath Party members from government and military roles.