Changes

Notwithstanding Geroge Bush's May 1, 2003 claim of "Mission Accomplished," the The war is currently ongoing, and since that claim was made has lasted longer than America's involvement in the Second World War. A number debates surround the war including there exists a large debate over topics such as disengagement of American forces and the role of nations in the region, and whether the WMD threat was sufficient stores of WMD's have been found to justify the invasion, and whether leading Democrats in Congress made a mistake when they voted for the war. The [[Bush Administration]] argues that the war is crucial to the larger U.S.-led [[War on Terrorism]]. Some Democrats have criticised criticized the administration for perceived the administration for percieved perceived blunders in the war on terror, and have themselves been criticized for doing so.

Since the new US-Iraqi offensive was launched in February 2007, anti-government forces have been put on the defensive in their former insurgent strong­hold of Anbar, Britain’s top general in Iraq said (March 2007). <ref>[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/b3fd545e-d70f-11db-b9d7-000b5df10621.html Iraq insurgents ‘on the defensive’], retrieved March 21, 2007</ref> The insurgency “didn’t do too well in Anbar . . . Their claims have failed to come to fruition,” he said, referring to the declaration by Islamist radicals that they had established a “caliphate”, or successorship, encompassing much of western Iraq. Lt Gen Lamb said that US and Iraqi forces were recruiting hundreds of police for the first time in towns in the Anbar region and that the forces were working together in shared combat outposts. While conceding that car bomb attacks In Baghdad and a surge of violence in neighbouring neighboring Diyala had to be addressed, he said that US and Iraqi planners were learning to reduce the threat, establishing an outer cordon around the city as well as barriers, or “point defence” defense” protection around key targets inside. The US military has reported cases in which car bombs have been stopped at checkpoints. In some cases the bombs detonated killing Iraqi security forces, but the casualties would arguably have been much greater had the blasts hit crowded commercial districts. General Lamb, who commanded British ground forces in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 said that multinational forces now had the benefit of four years of experience in fighting the insurgents.

Although no large physical stock piles of weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, the search is not over, and has yielded some results so far. Only about one-third of 36 million captured pages have been examined by a linguist and a summary gist of the document prepared.<ref>[http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/duelfer.html Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor Adviser to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD], retrieved March 21, 2007</ref> Many believe the physical WMDs that had been produced prior to the invasion were smuggled out of the country, possibly to [[Syria]], before the onset of the war.