World War 3 - Act 1: The Middle East
Scene 1: Baghdad Invaded
Scene 2: 'Victory' Declared
Scene I: Baghdad Invaded
The initial 42 day
war, waged strictly 'by the numbers'.
March 17, 2003 -- At
8:15pm, EST, President Bush announces a 48-hour ultimatum to
Saddam Hussein to leave the country with his sons, or suffer
the invasion.
March 20, 2003 -- US starts invasion
of Iraq, exactly 555 days after September 11, 2001.
April 9, 2003 -- Coalition Forces
seize control of Baghdad quickly and relatively effortlessly
because Saddam orders a tactical retreat.
April 12, 2003 -- "In a unique meeting in
St. Petersburg, Russia, the leaders of Russia, France, and
Germany meet to deliver a very somber warning against
President Bush. Russia's President Putin delivers the key
summation: 'We are not going to export capitalist, democratic
revolutions. If we do, we're going to end up on a slippery
slope to non-ending military conflicts. We can't let that
happen'." Putin backs up his threat by deploying the
Black Sea Fleet between Syria and North Korea, in Peter the
Great Bay, and conducts aggressive sea, air and land exercises
from April 15-21.
April 17, 2003 -- The US issues an
impossible ultimatum to Syria demanding:
-
the release of all Weapons of Mass
Destruction hidden by Saddam in Syria;
-
the return to Iraq of all officials of
the Saddam regime granted asylum;
-
the disbanding of command structures of
the Hizballah, Hamas, Jihad Islami and other Palestinian
terrorist groups.
April 17, 2003 -- The United States
bolsters its military presence near the Iraqi-Syrian border.
U.S. officials say Central Command has ordered a build-up of
assets in western Iraq. They say the build-up is centered at
Al Rutba and includes M1A1 main battle tanks, AH-64A attack
helicopters and A-10 ground-support fighter-jets.
April 17, 2003 -- Bechtel Corp., the San
Francisco construction giant, wins a contract worth up to $680
million to rebuild Iraqi roads, schools, sewers and hospitals
damaged in the war.
May 01, 2003 -- President Bush lands on the
aircraft carrier, Abraham Lincoln, at 3:33pm to declare the
major combat phase in the Iraqi War over, exactly 42 days
after the war started. In his speech he says, "The
battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on
September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on... From Pakistan
to the Philippines to the Horn of Africa, we are hunting down
al Qaeda killers... The liberation of Iraq is a crucial
advance in the campaign against terror... Our war against
terror is proceeding according to principles that I have made
clear to all: Any person involved in committing or planning
terrorist attacks against the American people becomes an enemy
of this country, and a target of American justice. Any person,
organization, or government that supports, protects, or
harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent,
and equally guilty of terrorist crimes. Any outlaw regime that
has ties to terrorist groups and seeks or possesses weapons of
mass destruction is a grave danger to the civilized world --
and will be confronted."
World War 3 - Act I, Scene II: Victory
Declared - Ongoing Hostilities
December 13, 2003 -- In one of the greatest PsyOp exercises of
all time, Saddam is captured while the dreaded Patriot Act II is
quietly signed into power.
January 18, 2004
-- Suicide car bombing near main gate to U.S.-led coalition's
headquarters in Baghdad kills at least 31 people.
February 1, 2004
-- Twin suicide bombers kill 109 people in two Kurdish party
offices in Irbil.
February 10, 2004
-- A suicide bomber detonates a truckload of explosives
outside a police station in Iskandariyah, killing 53 people.
February 11, 2004
-- A suicide attacker blows up a car packed with explosives in
a crowd of Iraqis waiting outside an army recruiting center in
Baghdad, killing 47.
March 2, 2004 -- In the deadliest
attack since the fall of Saddam Hussein, suicide bombers
strike Shiite Muslim shrines and kill
185 Iraqi religious pilgrims in Baghdad and Karbala.
March 22, 2004 -- Exactly 11 days
after the Madrid bombings, Israel assassinates the
quadriplegic, partially blind elderly Muslim clerical founder
of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. In a region which has become a hotbed of
political rage, could this assassination become the equivalent
to the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand
which ignited World War I?
March 31, 2004 -- In an apparent
retaliation, nine Americans
died in and around Fallujah 30 miles west of Baghdad in a
particularly horrendous spasm of blood-letting Wednesday,
March 31. Exactly one week after assuming responsibility for
the most intractable town in Iraq in a troop rotation, the
California-based 1st Marine Expeditionary Force suffered the
loss of five men in a single attack: a bomb exploded under
their vehicle in a village near Fallujah. Inside the city,
gunmen attacked two civilian cars carrying four US civilian
contractors. The cars were torched by a dancing lynch mob
which screaming Islamic slogans dragged the bodies through the
city, dismembered and decapitated them and hanged them by
their feet. DEBKAfile. For extremely graphic and
disturbing pictures of what happened, see
rumormillnews.com
March 31, 2004 -- In the first year
of war in Iraq, the military makes 18,004 medical
evacuations during Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Pentagon's top
health official told Congress. The new data, through March 13,
is nearly two-thirds higher than the 11,200 evacuations
through Feb. 5 cited in February to Congress by the same
official. DEBKAfile.
April 21, 2004
-- Five suicide bombings near police stations and police
academy in southern city of Basra kill at least 74 and wound
160.
April 24, 2004
-- A roadside bomb hits a bus south of Baghdad, killing 13.
April 30, 2004 -- A New Yorker
article appears exposing mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison in
Baghdad. Soon after, similar stories start breaking
about British troops engaging in the same activities. Details of prisoner abuse, torture and rape are
plastered all over the media, in a seeming attempt to fulfill
part of an overall plan to enrage specific Muslim
sensibilities in order to provoke war. See a
Timeline of events leading up to the torture.
May 11, 2004 -- A video
airing on an Islamic militant website shows a man who
identifies himself as Nick Berg from Philadelphia. The video
shows the man being beheaded. The website says he was executed
in revenge for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. All
indications are that the video is purely a psy-op exercise
designed to shock and scare Americans.
May 17, 2004 --
A suicide car bomber kills Izzadine Saleem, president of the
Iraqi Governing Council, and eight others including the bomber
outside the Green Zone.
June 1, 2004 --
A roadside bomb explodes near U.S. base in the northern town
of Beiji, killing 11 Iraqis and wounding more than 22 people,
including two U.S. soldiers.
June 1, 2004
-- A Sunni Governing Council Chief is named the new Iraqi
President after the U.S.-backed candidate refused the post.
The Iranian supreme
leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed Iraq’s new caretaker
administration a few days later as a 'lackey' government at
the beck and call of the United States. 'Humiliating Iraqi
men, raping Iraqi women, breaking down the doors of Iraqi
homes and installing a lackey government, that’s what happens
when you remove the clergy from politics', Khamenei said in a
keynote speech marking the 15th anniversary of the death of
his predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
June 6, 2004 --
A car bomb explodes near the entrance to an American-run base
at Taji north of Baghdad, killing at least nine people and
wounding 30 others, including three U.S. soldiers.
June 8, 2004 --
A car bomb explodes outside a U.S. base in Baqouba, killing
one U.S. soldier and five Iraqis. Fifteen Iraqis and 10 U.S.
soldiers are wounded. A second car bomb explodes in Mosul,
killing nine people and injuring 25.
June 13, 2004
-- A suicide car-bomber kills 12 people and wounds 13 near a
U.S. garrison in Baghdad.
June 14, 2004
-- A car bomb rips through convoy in Baghdad, killing 13
people, including an American, two Britons and a Frenchman.
At least 62 wounded.
June 17, 2004
-- A sport utility vehicle packed with artillery shells slams
into a crowd waiting to volunteer for the Iraqi military,
killing at least 35 people and wounding at least 138.
June 18, 2004
-- The second apparent beheading of an American - Paul M.
Johnson Jr., previously taken hostage by terrorists.
Gruesome photographs were apparently published on an Al Qaeda
Web site.
June 22, 2004
-- Militants behead Kim Sun-il in Iraq after Seoul refused
their demand to withdraw its troops and scrap plans to send
additional troops.
chosun.com
June 24, 2004
-- Insurgents launched fierce attacks that killed about 100
people in five Iraqi cities, wreaking havoc just days from the
handover of power. The worst attacks were in the city of Mosul,
where at least 62 people died and 220 were hurt in a series of
car bombings, the US military said. More than 40 people died
in Baquba, Ramadi, Falluja and Baghdad, in what appeared to be
coordinated attacks.
September 18, 2004
-- "Iraq had no WMD: the final verdict", by Julian Borger in
Washington, (London). "The comprehensive 15-month search
for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has concluded that the
only chemical or biological agents that Saddam Hussein's
regime was working on before last year's invasion were small
quantities of poisons, most likely for use in assassinations.
A draft of the Iraq Survey Group's final report circulating in
Washington found no sign of the alleged illegal stockpiles
that the US and Britain presented as the justification for
going to war, nor did it find any evidence of efforts to
reconstitute Iraq's nuclear weapons programme... President
George Bush now admits that stockpiles have not been found in
Iraq but claimed that "Saddam Hussein had the capability of
making weapons, and he could have passed that capability on to
the enemy".
November 8, 2004
-- 5,000 US-led troops kick off Operation Plymouth
Rock, in which 116 suspected insurgents are captured.
December 11, 2004 -- "U.S. deserter
numbers reach 5,500", Big News Network.com. "Since the
war started in Iraq, the Pentagon says 5,500 U.S. soldiers
have deserted, with some of them seeking refugee status in
Canada, CBS reported... Meanwhile, other soldiers who were
denied conscientious objector status are using the Internet to
locate Vietnam-era resisters who assist and even drive
objectors to Canada, CBS said." No doubt because of the
poor conditions coalition forces are expected to operate in.
Next: Act II:
Israel & Palestine
Intro |
Prelude |
Act I |
Act II |
Act III |
Act IV |
Act V
For a more detailed
timeline, covering 28 April 2003 to 16 April 2004, see
Iraq Timeline.
See also
Iraq Attacks at a Glance
World War 3 Statistics
>For a detailed look
at WW3 statistics, including the running cost of World War
Three, the number of lives lost and the countries involved
in World War Three, please see our
World War Overview.
Further details will be added as events dictate.
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