LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Iraq: Wars
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In recent weeks, the Bush administration has taken steps that hint at the possibility of the war in Iraq being widened to include Iran. Before such action is undertaken, a full congressional debate must occur and legislative approval must be granted.
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Iraq's major problems were feeding its population and rebuilding its war-torn country. These problems were aggravated by crippling trade sanctions. The Kurds again rose in revolt despite heavy-handed Iraqi military attacks, and in S Iraq, Shiites ... lashed out against the government. In 1992 the Kurds established an “autonomous region†in N Iraq. Two rival factions, the Kurdistan Democratic party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, engaged in sporadic warfare during the 1990s; in 1999 the two groups agreed to end hostilities.
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Bush’s $70 billion budget for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars account for costs only up to the first half of FY2009. In a budget hearing today, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson confirmed that the budget drastically lowballs Iraq war-related costs:
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BAGHDAD, May 26 -- The American counterinsurgency effort in Iraq's largest urban war zone is being fought in the sewers. Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, an earnest tank officer who recalled that he once dreamed of commanding "large mechanized formations across vast open deserts," is instead knee-deep in a very different fight.
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These found ready acceptance, for the U.S., too, was beginning to reassess its view of Iraq. Human rights obviously were not a major part of this reassessment for, even putting aside Iraq's use of chemical weapons, the war brought an intensification of repression at home, including executions, disappearances, torture and widespread arrests of perceived opponents. Instead, geopolitical considerations were the moving force in Washington. Many in the Reagan administration had already begun to look at the Hussein regime as the main bulwark against Iranian domination of the entire Near East and its vital oil reserves. U.S. policy-makers are reported to have concluded that an Iranian defeat of Iraq would not only put Iraq's vast oil resources under the control of the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini but would ... threaten the oil-rich, pro-Western governments of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf emirates. In l984 formal diplomatic relations were restored and the following year ambassadors were accredited in Washington and Baghdad.
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The public is split over whether the U.S. did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq: 49 percent say it was the right thing and 47 percent say it wasn't, the poll shows. Sixty-three percent of those polled say, in general, the Iraq war has not made Americans safer from terrorism; 32 percent say it has.
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