An Essay On The Iraq War

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In 1980, the militant state of Iraq, led by President Saddam Hussein invaded the Republic of Iran. Predicted to be an overwhelming victory for Iraq, the war took a different turn. It was an even battle, one that lasted eight years. After these eight years, the Iraqi economy was in a dire situation. Iraq's oil business was losing to other Arab countries such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, who were producing more oil for less money. Iraq needed more oil money to support the massive military it had amassed. On August 2, 1990, Iraq decided to invade Kuwait so that they could obtain Kuwait's oil and possibly gain access to the Saudi oil fields. This led to political conflict that eventually started the Gulf War between the US-led UN Coalition forces and Iraq. Although the US was successful in forcing Iraq to retreat from Kuwait, they made a poor exit which allowed Iraq to keep much of their military and left Hussein in power, which in turn caused many problems in the years to come.
Iraq invaded Kuwait so that they could erase the debt they had attained during the Iran-Iraq War, even with the threat of a US or UN retaliation. In 1980, Saddam Hussein and Iraq invaded Iran because they thought they had a good chance of taking over the country. There had been a revolution, and Hussein thought that the Iranian military would be weak and easy to overcome. However, Hussein was wrong, as the military was much more powerful than predicted. Their inability to quickly overtake Iran lead them to enter a war that took eight years to get out of. After those eight long years, Iraq had a massive military to support, but no money left to support it. Iraq relied on the oil business but increased production by Kuwait drove oil prices down. As Hussein said, ...

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...t's small) it had a major impact internationally. Since Saddam Hussein was left in power and Iraq kept its military, many problems arose. The Iraq War, caused by this decision, killed many people and destroyed the country of Iraq. It changed to heroic and innocent profile the US had gained after the Gulf War and 9/11 to a killer and 'the world's policeman'. The US's image had been scarred and Iraq was in shambles. The US economy had been hurt because of the spending needed to support the Iraq War, and was hurt more when an economic crisis arose. Around $5,000,000,000,000 (five trillion dollars) were added to the national debt during the Iraq War (2003-2010). Because of the effort to destroy the supposed WMDs, which would have been possible because of the supplies left in Iraq, and to kill Saddam Hussein, many problems have arisen now and many more will soon come up.

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