On Thursday 20th March 2003,the United Kingdom took part in the invasion and occupation in Iraq, led and inpartnership with the United States.
The purpose of the intervention within thesovereign state was to remove Saddam Hussain, the leader of the revolutionaryArab Socialist Ba’ath Party and the President of Iraq. After the fall of theTwin Towers within the US on the morning of 11th September 2001, theUnited States Administration pursued changes within Iraq in attempts toretaliate against the Taliban regime, Al-Qaeda and take steps towards “GlobalWar on Terror”. On terms of creating a strong alliance with the United States,the UK Government began seeking influence and support within the United Nationsto put for the motion of using force within Iraq. The determination to useforce within Iraq was a significant decision by the Government, as thisconsequence of the invasion felt through Iraq and the Middle East, as well aswithin the United Kingdom. The invasion of Iraq, was announced officiallyon 1 May 2003 when President Bush declared an end to major combat operation,the main aim for the coalition was to “disarm Iraq of weapons of massdestruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free thepeople of Iraq”. Supporting thejudgements of the US President, Tony Blair the former Prime Minister of the UKalso believed in the urgency for war by making three key statements; that Iraqhad the capability and interest of producing weapons of mass destruction; SaddamHussain’s possible links to international terror groups and belief that thepeople of Iraq needed to be set free from tyranny. What are weapons of mass destruction? Weapons of mass destruction have thecapacity to impose death and complete destruction of a country on such animmense scale but also threaten the natural environment to such extents ofradiation poisoning and many more; therefore, it is seen that whoever holdssuch weapons are a greater threat to international world and the contemporaryglobal security environment. Modern versions of WMD’S can be biological,nuclear or chemical weapons.
Iraq had a history of producing anddeveloping chemical nuclear weapons known as weapons of mass destruction; fromearlier years dating back to 1991, Iraqi officials failed to disclose theirspecial weapons programme to weapons inspectors and refused to acceptprovisions from previous resolutions. The securitycouncil from the United Nation had developed and adopted resolution 1284 in1999 which established the UNMOVIC “United Nations Monitoring, Verification andInspections Commissions which set out to carry on with the mandate to disarmIraq of their weapons of mass destruction, and to monitor Iraq’s compliancewith its obligations to not produce or generate WMDS. The security councilwould continue to decide what requirements Iraq would have to meet, and hadchanged the criteria for possible suspensions, and sanctions for completedisarmament. Iraq had refused to accept the requirements of the resolution,which included the re-admissions of the past weapons inspectors, which increasedthe concerns of Iraq’s activities in the absence of the inspectors and raisedworries whether Iraq was producing WMD’s once the inspectors had left. Also, the continuing concerns of how long thepolicy could last and what the it can achieve, and the continuing issue of thelegal basis for the operations in the No-Fly Zones and the conduct of theindividual operations. Saddam Hussain continued to notcooperate with the new resolution unless there was a set UN agreed timetablefor the lifting of sanctions, he suspected that the United States would notagree to such sanction lift as long as Saddam Hussain remained in power; theother condition being that he should be able to negotiate with the UN in regardto lessening the inspection provisions,
