In Iraq however, triple language programmes are, like in Lebanon and Syria, normal, except rather than using French, Kurdish is taught alongside Arabic and English due to Iraq's considerably sized Kurdish minority in the north, and bilingual official language policy regarding Kurdish.

The official rationale for Desert Fox may remain the " degrading " of Iraq's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction and the " diminishing " of the Iraqi threat to its neighbours.

While conceding that " n statistical terms, the majority of the inspections of facilities and sites under the ongoing monitoring system were carried out with Iraq's cooperation ," his letter listed a number of instances where unspecificed " undeclared dual-capable items " had been discovered, and where inspections had been held up so that buildings could be cleared of sensitive material.

" though according to the BBC " Iraq's independent electoral commission says statistical irregularities in last week's referendum could indicate fraud.

Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei presented several reports to the UN detailing Iraq's level of compliance with Resolution 1441..

* UN weapons inspectors Ritter and Smidovitch learn, through Israeli intelligence reports, that Qusay Hussein, Saddam's son, is the key player in hiding Iraq's illegal weapons.

* UNSCOM reports to the UN Security Council that Iraq's declaration on its biological weapons program is incomplete and inadequate.

* A UN panel reports that Iraq's al-Samoud 2 missiles, disclosed by Iraq to weapons inspectors in December, have a range of 180 km ( above the 150 km limit allowed by the UN ), splitting opinion over whether they breach UNSCR 1441.

There were reports of looting of Iraq's archaeological treasures, mostly from the National Museum of Iraq ; up to an alleged 170, 000 items, worth billions of U. S. dollars: these reports were later revealed to be vastly exaggerated.

Kelly had been the source for reports made by three BBC journalists that the Government, particularly the press office of Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, had knowingly embellished the dossier with misleading exaggerations of Iraq's military capabilities ; specifically, a claim that Iraq had the ability to launch a strike using " weapons of mass destruction " within 45 minutes.

Following Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in 1990, Amanpour's reports of the Persian Gulf War brought her wide notice while also taking the network to a new level of news coverage.

The United States reports that Coalition airstrikes against Iraqi military forces in Kuwait have destroyed 1, 300 of Iraq's 4, 280 tanks, 850 of its 2, 870 armored personnel carriers, and 1, 100 of its 3, 110 artillery pieces there.

In October, 2002 the Intelligence Community ( IC ) produced a classified, 90-page National Intelligence Estimate ( NIE ) on Iraq's WMD programmes which cited reports that Iraq began " vigorously trying to procure " more uranium from Niger and two other African countries.

Powell presented several credible intelligence reports vetted by the Intelligence Community showing contacts between Iraq's Intelligence Service and al-Qaeda.

According to the SSCI report, " Iraqi Support for Terrorism contained the following summary judgments regarding Iraq's provision of training to al-Qaida: Regarding the Iraq-al-Qa ' ida relationship, reporting from sources of varying reliability points to ... incidents of training ... The most disturbing aspect of the relationship is the dozen or so reports of varying reliability mentioning the involvement of Iraq or Iraqi nationals in al-Qa ' ida's efforts to obtain CBW training.

In September 2006, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released two reports constituting Phase II of its study of pre-war intelligence claims regarding Iraq's pursuit of WMD and alleged links to al-Qaeda.

These bipartisan reports included " Findings about Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments " and " The Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress ".

The CIA told the Committee that regarding Iraq's links to terrorism, " the research the Counterterrorist Center has done on this issue has called into question some of the reports of contacts and training ... revealed other contacts of which we were unaware, and shed new light on some contacts that appeared in prewar reporting.

There are reports that attribute to Mohammed Al-Masari the assertion that Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein contacted Afghan Arabs in late 2001, following the American invasion, inviting them to find refuge in Iraq.

*" If we had listened to the various reports and analyses that had been prepared, many of them from within the U. S. Government, in advance of the war, we would have realized that Iraqis would not stand for an occupation, and certainly not one combining in its authority two countries they deeply distrusted and resented, the United States and Britain ( Iraq's former colonial ruler ).

U. S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie met with Saddam in an emergency meeting on 25 July 1990, where the Iraqi leader stated his intention to give negotiations only ... one more brief chance before forcing Iraq's claims on Kuwait.

In spite of the fact that little damage was done to Iraq's oil fields during the war itself, looting and sabotage after the war ended was highly destructive and accounted for perhaps eighty percent of the total damage.

By the early 1990s, however, up to 60 % of the total amount of fish caught in Iraq's inland waters came from the marshes.

Overall, postwar analysis indicated that Iraq's ability to move supplies from Baghdad to the Kuwaiti theater of operations had dropped from a total potential capacity of 216, 000 metric tons per day over a total of six main routes ( including a rail line ) to only 20, 000 metric tons per day over only two routes, a nearly 91 percent reduction in capacity ; all others ( including the railroad ) had essentially been destroyed.

The Center for Public Integrity alleges that President Bush's administration made a total of 935 false statements in a two-year period about Iraq's alleged threat to the United States.

The war began when Iraq invaded Iran, launching a simultaneous invasion by air and land 22 September 1980 following a long history of border disputes, and fuelled by fears of Shia Islam insurgency among Iraq's long-suppressed Shia majority influenced by the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

Tactics used included trench warfare, machine gun posts, bayonet charges, use of barbed wire across trenches and on no-man's land, human wave attacks and Iraq's extensive use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas against Iranian troops and civilians as well as Iraqi Kurds.

In October 2004, Iraq's interim government transferred to U. S. ownership of land beside the Tigris River in Baghdad for construction of a new U. S. embassy.

* An operation of about 30 attack helicopters against the Medina Division of Iraq's Republican guard, entrenched in the Karbala area, has taken place during the early hours of March 24.

Moving through the Republican Guards ' security area on the morning of the 26th, the Regiment encountered Iraq's heavily armored Tawakalna Division in the north and the 12th Iraqi Armored Division in the center and south.

* 1990 – Gulf War: the United Nations Security Council orders a global trade embargo against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Two of the most dramatic changes were in Iraq's relationships with the Soviet Union and with the United States.

* 17-Dr. David Kelly, 59 ( suicide ), former United Nations weapons inspector who was accused of leaking information to the BBC about Britain's dossier on Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction.

However, in a private meeting with Salah Omar Al-Ali, Iraq's permanent ambassador to the United Nations, he revealed that he intended to invade and occupy a large part of Iran within months.

" After Saddam's seizure of Kuwait in August 1990, a UN coalition led by the United States drove Iraq's troops from Kuwait in February 1991.

* The United States Senate passes Resolution 71, urging U. S. President Bill Clinton to " take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.

INC's political platform promised " human rights and rule of law within a constitutional, democratic, and pluralistic Iraq "; preservation of Iraq's territorial integrity, and complete compliance with international law, including United Nations resolutions relating to Iraq.

UNMOVIC was to replace the former United Nations Special Commission ( UNSCOM ) and continue with the latter's mandate to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction, and to operate a system of ongoing monitoring and verification to check Iraq's compliance with its obligations not to reacquire the same weapons prohibited to it by the Security Council.

On 19 December, Hans Blix reported before the United Nations and stated in regards to Iraq's 7 December report ( unedited version ): " During the period 1991 – 1998, Iraq submitted many declarations called full, final and complete.

One of the war's earliest critics, Carpenter wrote in January 2002: " Ousting Saddam would make Washington responsible for Iraq's political future and entangle the United States in an endless nation-building mission beset by intractable problems.

For example, the United States and the UK blocked condemnation of Iraq's known chemical weapons attacks at the UN Security Council.

United Nations Special Commission ( UNSCOM ) was an inspection regime created by the United Nations to ensure Iraq's compliance with policies concerning Iraqi production and use of weapons of mass destruction after the Gulf War.

United Nations Special Commission ( UNSCOM ) was an inspection regime created with the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 in April 1991 to oversee Iraq's compliance with the destruction of Iraqi chemical, biological, and missile weapons facilities and to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency ’ s efforts to eliminate nuclear weapon facilities all in the aftermath of the Gulf War.

The United States declared that " Iraq's policy of unremitting defiance and non-compliance necessitated the resort to military force ".

The United Kingdom stated that the objectives of the action were " to degrade Iraq's capability to build and use weapons of mass destruction, and to diminish the military threat Iraq poses to its neighbours.

In his February 9, 2003, column for The Wall Street, Friedman also pointed to the lack of compliance with the United Nations Security Council Resolution regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction: " The French position is utterly incoherent.

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, it cited Iraq's non-compliance with the terms of cease-fire agreement for the 1990-1991 Gulf War, as well as planning in 1993 attempted assassination of former President George H. W. Bush and firing on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones as its stated.

Since Iraq's invasion in 1990 of Kuwait, Iraqi Airways was grounded by the United Nations ' sanctions against the country.

He also made some controversial comments, arguing that Quebec separation should not be envisaged with the same haste as Iraq's invasion by the United States.

After reviewing the document, UN weapons inspectors, the US, France, United Kingdom and other countries thought that this declaration failed to account for all of Iraq's chemical and biological agents.

Blix has complained that, to this day, the United States and Britain have not presented him with the evidence which they claim to possess regarding Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

* The UN Secretary General rejects Iraq's August 2 proposal as the " wrong work program ", but recommends that Iraq allow the return of weapons inspectors in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1284, passed in 1999.