25: Around the World in 60 Years: Operations 1945 2006 in Visual Studio .NET

Generating QR-Code in Visual Studio .NET 25: Around the World in 60 Years: Operations 1945 2006

Iraqi losses in personnel, tanks, guns, and armoured personnel carriers were too great to quantify with any accuracy Coalition losses were light Very few British casualties occurred, but half derived from friendly fire when an American tank-buster aircraft attacked a British armoured column by mistake

On 11 September 2001, Islamic extremists flew two civilian airliners into the World Trade Center in New York, destroying the buildings and killing thousands of innocent people America s understandable desire for revenge centred first on Afghanistan, ruled by a Muslim fundamentalist group known as the Taliban, who allowed an Islamic network called Al-Qaeda to train its members in terrorist techniques on Afghan soil The American response, aided by Afghan forces hostile to the government, soon ousted the Taliban The SAS made the principal British contribution, fighting a savage battle of extermination with Taliban/Al-Qaeda fighters amid the rocks, caves, and hills of Helmand province in the south of Afghanistan Somehow, the Taliban managed to infiltrate their way back into Afghanistan By 2006 they were particularly strong in Helmand province, a poppy-growing area of vital interest to drug dealers While the province is nominally a NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) responsibility, in practice the real fighting has been done by the British Army and Royal Marines The fighting was the heaviest that British troops have been involved in since the Second World War, with the Taliban sustaining serious losses for little return At the time of writing, an end to British commitment in Afghanistan seems remote

The Second Gulf War, 2003

President George Bush Jnr turned his attention to Iraq, mindful of the unfinished business his father had left Saddam Hussein was indeed still in power, but his grip on Iraq was such that neither Al-Qaeda nor any other terrorist group was able to operate inside the country (see the preceding section) The American and British governments: Peddled the story that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and could launch them against the West within 45 minutes The UN Weapons Inspectorate couldn t find them; it seems that no weapons of this kind existed Iraq did possess some short-range tactical missiles, but had already surrendered these for destruction Said that what they really wanted was regime change in Iraq because Saddam was a mass murderer However, changing other people s regimes because you don t like them is illegal, so the politicians then said they were keen to bring western democracy to the Iraqi people

Part VI: The Second World War (and Beyond)

The United Nations did not sanction an armed American and British invasion, but Bush and British Prime Minister Blair s administrations produced dubious evidence that Saddam was planning all sorts of evil Despite serious public reservations, Great Britain found itself embroiled in an American war the legality of which remains highly questionable America and Britain assembled a coalition force in Kuwait Operations against Iraq commenced on 20 March 2003 with a bombardment by cruise missiles and laser-guided munitions on targets in Baghdad and elsewhere The basic strategy of the campaign was for the Americans to head straight for Baghdad, while the British contingent prevented the destruction of the southern Iraqi oilfields, took Basra, and captured the port of Umm Qasr, getting the docks back into working order After the Americans had taken Baghdad on 9 April, the British pushed north from Basra to join them at Amarah Getting to that point was the easy part Unfortunately, American politicians decreed that the coalition should disband the Iraqi army and police immediately This proved to be a disastrous error of judgement Suddenly, Iraq was full of armed men pursuing their own aims: Some were Saddam loyalists Some represented a resistance to the coalition Some were religious militias eager to do the bidding of their leaders In Basra and the south of Iraq, long British experience in counter insurgency maintained a more stable atmosphere than in other areas, where the American casualty lists lengthened by the day By degrees, the insurgents learned that sniping at British patrols was very dangerous, so they resorted to roadside bombs Saddam Hussein s capture in a hole in the ground on 12 December 2003 did not have a calming effect Since then Muslim fighters and Al-Qaeda terrorists have swarmed into Iraq, while the Shia and Sunni Muslim sects do their best to destroy each other, and suicide bombers create indiscriminate slaughter No end to coalition involvement in Iraq seems to be in sight at the time of writing On 1 October 2006 the number of Iraqi civilians killed since the invasion was put at a minimum of 50,000 American military deaths at the present time are in excess of 3000, while 236 British soldiers have lost their lives