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Cloaked in the ambition of the "war on terror" and buoyed by the unwavering post-9/11 support, the United States engaged in a bombing campaign in Iraq followed by an invasion in March 2003. In preparation for the 2003 invasion, the United States built a complicated case for war based on several problematic bodies of evidence and then presented this evidence to the American people and the international community; this disputed evidence was collected to justify the invasion of Iraq. The tenets of the case for war included: the connection of Saddam Hussein to the events of 9/11, the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and the unknown motives and future actions of an evil dictator. The United States is now over five years into the war, and the overarching sentiment among the American people is that the war in Iraq was based on faulty information and that "evidence" used to justify the war was either mostly unfounded or even fabricated. Given this problematic evidence to support the official justifications for war, the research question is "Why did the United States still invade Iraq in March 2003?" Clearly, there is not a definitive answer to the research question. The variables for engaging in war are very complex. Often times the benefit of time passage will allow scholars to obtain a more focused understanding of "why" a sovereign power engaged in a particular war. We are not yet at a point where we can write definitively about "why" the US invaded Iraq in 2003. However, it is possible to present an analytical case regarding the reasons used in the time leading up to the US invasion of Iraq. In this thesis, the evidence has been explored, and the result is a presentation, an assessment of the evidence to make a case for why the US invaded Iraq. Many different political opinions and theories have been advanced to explain why the United States entered this war. Several credible scholars and journalists have made meaningful contributions to the study of this war and the justifications used by the White House for it. It is possible to provide a preliminary framework for understanding why the United States invaded Iraq by using current events literature, official documents and other available sources to document the war in the absence of the official, classified documents. Based on an assessment of available evidence, this thesis proposes that one of the primary reasons for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 centers on oil; the US was interested in protecting its oil interests and what the White House saw as US geo-strategic position in the Middle East. / Master of Arts

<p>The aim of this paper is to try to explain how specific, foreign policy decisions are made, and why one state decides to use violence against another state. A qualitative method is used, and text and documents are analysed. The two theoretical points of departure are central within foreign policy analysis: realism´s theories on external threats and constructivism´s theories on ideas´ policy influence. The empirical case chosen is the US decision to use military violence against Iraq. The paper investigates whether the real threat from Saddam Hussein´s Iraq was the cause of the American military attacks, or whether the ideas of leading politicians in the USA were decisive for the decision to invade the country. The main theoretical assumption is that politicians´ ideas – rather than real, external threats – influence their actions. </p><p>The differences between President Clinton´s benevolent Iraq policy and President Bush´s aggressive Iraq policy can be summarized as a result of a combination of a changed external environment and differences in ideas on the use of military violence. The general conclusion is that politicians´ ideas – rather than real, external threats – influence their decision-making on specific foreign policy decisions.</p>

The aim of this paper is to try to explain how specific, foreign policy decisions are made, and why one state decides to use violence against another state. A qualitative method is used, and text and documents are analysed. The two theoretical points of departure are central within foreign policy analysis: realism´s theories on external threats and constructivism´s theories on ideas´ policy influence. The empirical case chosen is the US decision to use military violence against Iraq. The paper investigates whether the real threat from Saddam Hussein´s Iraq was the cause of the American military attacks, or whether the ideas of leading politicians in the USA were decisive for the decision to invade the country. The main theoretical assumption is that politicians´ ideas – rather than real, external threats – influence their actions.  The differences between President Clinton´s benevolent Iraq policy and President Bush´s aggressive Iraq policy can be summarized as a result of a combination of a changed external environment and differences in ideas on the use of military violence. The general conclusion is that politicians´ ideas – rather than real, external threats – influence their decision-making on specific foreign policy decisions.

This paper sets itself upon analyzing the Iraq War of 2003 through the lens of modern Just War Theory. We will begin with a curt summary of Iraq’s history, focusing particularly on its determinedly odious leader, Saddam Hussein. Thereon, we will be analyzing a pro-war security argument, the aim of which is to assess the threat of Hussein’s weaponry ambitions and what that threat meant to the world. Next, we will be going over the tenets of Just War Theory itself, tracing its history from Rome to the modern doorstep, and applying the security argument to its dictum. Afterwards, we move into the anti-war segment and shall unpack the subject of Iraq's oil resources and whether or not the United States' actions disqualify the intervention from achieving Just War status. Then, our next section shall be addressing the same question of potential disqualification, only this time from the angle of the war’s questionable legality. Finally, we shall conclude on the ultimate query of this paper: was the U.S. decision to intervene in 2003’s Iraq compatible with the modern principles of Just War Theory?

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservative Washington, D.C. foreign policy think tank, comprised of seasoned foreign policy stalwarts who had served multiple presidential administrations as well as outside-the-beltway defense contractors, that was founded in 1997 by William Kristol, editor of the conservative political magazine The Weekly Standard, and Robert Kagan, a foreign policy analyst and political commentator currently at the Brookings Institution. The PNAC would shut down its operations in 2006. Using The Weekly Standard as its mouthpiece, the PNAC helped foment support for the removal of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein beginning in 1998, citing Iraq’s noncooperation with UN weapons inspections. The PNAC became further emboldened in its urgency and rhetoric to quell the geopolitical risk posed by Hussein after the 9/11 terror attacks. The only justifiable response the George W. Bush Administration could play in thwarting Hussein, the PNAC argued, involved a military action. Keywords: The Project for the New American Century; Iraq War; Saddam Hussein; The Weekly Standard; The Vulcans; weapons of mass destruction

This collection of two short stories and one novella seeks to express and embody concepts of narrative form and technique developed over the course of this graduate program with regards to the formulation of believable, nonrealist fictional realities in an American idiom which can enter into the global critical conversation of similarly-purposed international literature.

No / This volume explores in close detail the events and factors leading up to the second Gulf War in 2003 and considers whether war with Iraq was inevitable. Nick Ritchie and Paul Rogers argue that after the election of George W. Bush, conflict between Iraq and the United States was probable, and that after 9/11 it became virtually inevitable. They begin by setting the story of Iraq, Bush and 9/11 within the broader context of the importance of the Persian Gulf to enduring US national security interests and go on to examine the intense politicking that surrounded the conflict and still reverberates today. The authors examine US policy towards Iraq at the end of the Clinton administration, the opposition in Congress and Washington's conservative think tanks to Clinton's strategy of containment, and the evolution of Iraq policy during the first eight months of the Bush presidency and the growing pressure for regime change. They also explore the immediate focus on Iraq after the attacks of September 11 that marked a watershed in US national security policy and chart the construction of the case against Iraq through 2002 and the administration's determination to end Saddam Hussein's regime at all costs. The Political Road to War with Iraq will be of great interest to all students and scholars of US foreign policy, war and peace studies and international relations.

<p>Abstract</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the way George W. Bush used moral metaphors to intensify the language in his statements on Operation Iraqi Freedom. Three moral metaphors are presented within two different models that are applied on the data.</p><p>The collected material for the metaphors is constituted of cognitive linguistic books from prominent linguists, such as George Lakoff, Alan Cruse and William Croft, and the data is collected from the official White House website. The scientific method used in this study has been qualitative text analysis where the hermeneutic approach has been an essential part of it.</p><p>The main question: In what way did George W. Bush use moral metaphors in his statements to justify Operation Iraqi Freedom?, resulted in use of moral metaphors that sermons people’s moral values, depict Saddam Hussein’s characteristics as immoral, activate people’s moral priorities to help the Iraqi people, and addresses both conservatives and liberals in America.</p><p>The conclusion of my study is that President Bush deliberately intensified the language in his statements through moral metaphors to justify Operation Iraqi Freedom.</p><p>Keywords: Cognitive Linguistics, Metaphor, Figurative Language, Operation Iraqi Freedom, War on Terror, George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein, USA, Iraq, Qualitative Text Analysis, Hermeneutics.</p>

This thesis explores new ideas for the foundations for state violence in Iraq by looking specifically at the outbreaks of spectacular violence during the Qasim Era (1958-1963). In order to frame the discussion, this study looks first at how the British established a model for state violence during the Monarchy period (1921-1958), which eventually both validated and radicalized the opposition parties. The second chapter examines the violence of the everyday in Iraq, and how the spectacular violence of the Qasim Era finds historical context within everyday violence and ritual. In the final chapter, this thesis discusses how the radicalized violence of the opposition parties melded with the violence of the everyday to create spectacular acts of ritualized violence. After the coup d’état of 8 February 1963, the Ba’ath Party institutionalized this radical new brand of violence, creating a foundation for the state violence to come under Saddam Hussein. This violence was experienced only by the Iraqi Communists at first, but was later experienced by the whole nation. / text