Operation Iraqi Freedom Research Proposal Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Operation Iraqi Freedom - Research Proposal Example The Operation Iraqi Freedom is also called the Second Gulf War or the War in Iraq. It is a military operation that is still on and began in March 2003. The military comprises mainly the US and UK troops and backed in smaller proportions by troops from Denmark, Australia, Poland and a few other countries. This operation was publicly supported by all the Arab nations. However, NATO did not publicly support this invasion and the Eastern European nations were willing to support the operation. Earlier before this operation, Iraq was believed to possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The WMD present a threat to the national security of Western countries. UK totally supported this assessment while France, Russia and Germany did not. The United Nations inspector of weapons however did not find any evidence of WMD. This raised the support to earlier criticisms about this war. After this invasion, the Iraq Survey Group made a conclusion that Iraq stopped its WMD projects in 1991 and did no t have WMD programs at that moment but intended to resume the programs once Iraq sanctions were lifted. The US also claimed that Iraq supported financially the families of suicide bombers in Palestine. More accusations included abuse of human rights by the government and lack of democracy in Iraq. The Iraqi military was defeated and Saddam Hussein executed. The US led coalition tried to install a new democratic government. This caused violence against the coalition forces. Many Iraqis lost their lives and millions sought refuge. The failure Iraqi reconstruction is viewed by many as having failed. The lucrative contracts have failed to show any signs of improving the country's infrastructure. Contracts for rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure were given without competitive bidding. These contract awarding was the responsibility of the US Agency for International Development. Mistakes were committed just after the Iraqi invasion. Four years after the Iraqi military campaign about 21 billion dollars were used. However, Iraq now produces less oil and electricity than it was before the war. The plan to reconstruct the country was a poor one. Plenty of scandals erupted after the war. Reconstruction contracts were given out without any competition. Beneficiaries of these contracts include Kellogg Brown and Root and Bechtel. Both companies are closely linked to the Bush Administration. It is a great scandal that even the humble infrastructure before the war was not saved and the reconstruction's planning was very poor. Output from the money spent on rebuilding is just a fraction of what the Iraqis expected. The original plan the largest portion of the money, 5.56 billion dollars, was to improve electricity production. It would upgrade power stations, transmitting of power and distributing. That was reduced to 4.24 billion dollars. Oil projects had their 1.89 billion dollars reduced to