Talk:2003 invasion of Iraq/Archive 2

This entry badly needs an introductory paragraph. --The Cunctator

Unless I'm missing something, isn't the naming a bit premature? Just because it's very likely to happen doesn't mean we can pretend it has. - Khendon 10:36 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

<sarcasm>Surely you cannot doubt the combined forces... of the tarot, crystal ball, the I Ching and the countless confirmatory organs of divination relied on by Miss Cleo?!?!?!? How boring and dull to wait for something to happen before you report it, when you can predict it and scoop all the other wikipedias!!</sarcasm> -- Someone else 10:53 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

S.E. actually has a point, Khendon. As of Monday 3/17/03 the "plan" to invade was upgraded from a possible scenario into a fairly stern threat. I'd say "prospective invasion" was fair at this point, although I still have hopes that Bush will listen to Rev. Moon and call it off. Violence cannot make peace; only God's parental love can reconcile warring brothers. --Uncle Ed 19:06 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

However, it may turn out to be a US-UK-Australian-Turkish invasion of Iraq, or some such combination. ( 19:12 Mar 17, 2003 (UTC)

Then we can simply rename it Invasion of Iraq or if there have been too many invasions, Invasion of Iraq (2003). Perhaps at some point we should re-organize or re-title some of these articles, though, because I've lost count of how many there are discussing the prospect or possibility or plan for a US-led invasion of Iraq, in the aftermath of 9/11.

regime change, should be regime change in Iraq
US plan to invade Iraq redirects to US invasion of Iraq

See also:

--Uncle Ed

This may be moot as of tomorrow, but I strongly agree that this article's title is premature. -- Zoe

I think it should be renamed (maybe to Military buildup for the 2003 invasion of Iraq) and a new page created if the actual invasion takes place. ( 12:42 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

How about US preparations for the invasion of Iraq ( 23:41 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

I think we need two separate article:

preparations and discussion prior to the invasion, and
the courese of the actual invasion

For one thing, there are 46 (I counted 'em) REDIRECT's to U.S. plan to invade Iraq, which is currently a redirect page to US invasion of Iraq. --Uncle Ed 16:23 Mar 20, 2003 (UTC)

Statements such as "many people have expressed" and "few military analysts believe" are merely hearsay. The article *must* provide exactly who said what and when. Which military analysts? What exactly did they say? Kingturtle 17:26 Mar 20, 2003 (UTC)

...."and allegations that he was involved in the September 11 attacks."

Who has alleged that Saddam was involved in the Sept 11 attacks? This has never been the U.S. government's position. I'm sure that connections were investigated, but I haven't heard anyone actually claim that he was involved...

I saw a CNN survey on Sunday which said that 51% of Americans believe that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks, though I haven't heard any official allege such things. -- Zoe

I don't believe any reputable source has "confirmed" that the missiles fired into Kuwait were SCUD missiles, at least not yet. --AW

I'd also not heard any such confirmation, but Reuters here reports a couple of such claims. It would be best, I think, if we said exactly who had confirmed these were Scuds though, because an Iraqi spokesman appears to have denied they were (in a rather confused sentence which you can read in several different ways, but still). I'll let somebody else pick it apart though, I'm off to bed. --Camembert

The BBC report also seems a tad confused - it refers to the missiles as "scud type", but then later says "if it were to be confirmed that..." Sheesh, I dunno what's going on. :) --AW

Well said. Iraq will make claims; the U.S. will make claims. Better details might come into focus in a few days, or months, or years. After all, LBJ lied to us about the Gulf of Tonkin. Who knows what kind of drivel we are being fed. The media frenzies today are out of control. What sicks me is to hear TV and radio reports all saying the same bit of gossip as if they had made it up. Kingturtle 02:47 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

I'm going to take the scud bit out, then, on the principle that it's best not to include anything in this article unless it's rock solid and copper-bottomed... --AW

All the reports I have seen are about southern oil fields with a few flaming wells, not Northern ones. Is there a source for this claim? Rmhermen 15:51 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

CNN reports the flaming oil wells are in the South. http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/21/sprj.irq.oil.wells/index.html

Reuters reports that there are only 7 wells set on fire.

Rmhermen 17:02 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

I was interpreting the BBC article, which said the wells on fire were in "other parts of the country", and definitely says that there is fighting around the northern oil wells. They've revised a bit since then, though, and now split the sections: near the top of the article they have this - "But Chief of the UK Defence Staff Admiral Sir Michael Boyce said that elsewhere in Iraq seven oil wells had been set alight by Iraqi forces, down from an earlier estimate of 30." (the "elsewhere" follows on from the previous paragraph, which discussed the al-Faw peninsula). Now *LATER* in the article, not together with that bit as it was previously, comes this: "Meanwhile, fierce fighting has been reported around the big oil fields in northern Iraq, which US special forces are said to be trying to secure." Seems there might be a northern theatre which the U.S. military isn't so keen for the reports to discuss. BBC article --AW

The invasion is not entirely a "US invasion" as British forces are also involved. Is there a way to rename the article that won't seem to "hide" the US initiative, leadership and responsibility for the invasion?

2003 invasion of Iraq is certainly neutral and factual, but seems a bit vague
US-led invasion of Iraq ??

--Uncle Ed

The latter seems fine to me; I don't think there's any disputation that it's a US-led operation. - Khendon

I concur. Also, I think the whole article is getting a little unwieldy and internally inconsistent, due to bits of it being written at different times by different people under different circumstances. Does anyone agree it needs to be copyedited to be consistent in terms of tense (try and use past tense wherever possible, this is an encyclopaedia article after all) and naming (try and use the same name for the same country consistently?) --AW

We could lose some of the speculative "plan" sections like the one about the air war preceeding the ground war - which of course didn't happen. Rmhermen 16:08 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

Um, what the hell is going on? What's this new US-led invasion article? Is someone planning a big useful reorganisation, or just messing things up? Someone please clarify... --AW

I would move this article back to US plan to invade Iraq, but the existing redirect there has some history preventing it. ( 17:53 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

But this article isn't about the plan, it's about the invasion. We now have two articles about the same thing, which isn't helpful. And the one you've just created is just a subset of this one. --AW

That's easily fixed: modify this article so it again reflects the plan. That's what it's about mostly. Move the stuff about the actual invasion to the new article.

I disagree. I think it's best to have an overarching article like this which can discuss the invasion in totam - the preparations, the international situation, the course of the invasion itself, the ramifications...either that or split it into quite a lot of different articles. Two - a "plans" article and an "invasion" article - doesn't look like a good structure to me. --AW

I think there's scope for a separate article for the events leading to the invasion, that can be summarised and linked from the invasion page. There's too much to cover for one article. However Iraq_disarmament_crisis also exists ( 18:04 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

That's not the same as a page merely for invasion plans, though. Maybe something like "Events leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq"? --AW

Events is a little vague. I suggested US preparations for the invasion of Iraq earlier?

No, because you describe it as "a separate article for the events leading to the invasion". This is surely broader than "US preparations". The point is that if there's going to be a split like this, the pre-invasion article has to cover stuff like the UN diplomacy, which doesn't come under the heading of "US preparations". --AW

Perhaps simply renaming is not a good plan. Some of the current article is just speculation about the likely course of the invasion and can probably be deleted. There is a description of military forces that could be moved to an article devoted to such things. There are already separate articles about Weapons of Mass Destruction that could take some of the material here. ( 19:01 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

I suggest instead moving it to US-led invasion of Iraq and trying to fix up these points. ( 19:37 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

OK, can we please come up with an unambiguous plan? Let me propose:

An article limited to a pure description of the actual invasion - not what happened before it or political controversy, just the military invasion itself. This can be "US-led invasion of Iraq" or "2003 invasion of Iraq" (this actually strikes me as a better title - this is an encyclopaedia, there may be other US-led invasions of Iraq people want to discuss. 2003 invasion is less ambiguous).

The other stuff from this page can be rolled into other articles, possibly - the "disarmament crisis" articles and the WMD article, perhaps. Any others? Whatever, let's get it done quickly, I have a bunch of stuff about the actual invasion and nowhere to put it at the moment. --AW

OK, I took action and cut this down to an article on the invasion itself. Now we need to discuss where to put the stuff I cut out.

Firstly, "US rationale for invasion". I think this and the "military preparations" section and just about everything else under it deserve a separate article on US political and military actions in the lead-up to the invasion.

The "UN position" section can possibly be rolled into the "United Nations actions regarding Iraq" page.

I think we can lose the "effect on civilians" section for now, and write a new article on the consequences of the invasion once it's actually FINISHED.

Comments? --AW

A bit of an NPOV problem -- the article was just starting to become a bit balanced between an exclusively US pov and a UN/rest-of-world POV. This, IMHO, was a good thing. If you split the pro-sentiment into one article, and the anti-sentiment into another, neither comes out neutral, they both end up looking like propaganda.

There should, I think, in an encyclopedia, be a single page, easily found with an obvious title, which makes some attempt to give a balanced point of view.

I don't see that this article is giving any point of view. This is a factual article about the events of the invasion, I don't see that it has any position on whether the invasion is desirable or not. It simply says "On Day X, force Y did Z". The reportage about the various positions on whether the invasion should be happening in the first place belong elsewhere, at least in the schema that ) and I are proposing. Probably in the UN article and the article on Iraqi WMDs. --AW

This article may not be the appropriate one to argue about, but the article that it was 2 hours ago is.

The problem isn't that your facts are unsupported (they are facts all right), but that only the facts being played up by U.S. press are being reported. If you want a "copper-bottomed" factual article, read some outside sources first. I've been following several outside sources including the U.N, German, Italian, French and Russian press. The U.S.-only bias is pretty obvious once you've read the others.

You're not seriously suggesting that the Frenchm, German, Italian and Russian sources are going to be free of bias are you?

Nobody disagrees on the facts, but which facts are mentioned and which are downplayed can lead to a bias, and sometimes a less-than-subtle one.

The article you are moving (where has it gone, anyway?) was starting to take shape because several of the american-downplayed facts and arguments were being slowly re-introduced.

For example, to look at the U.S. press, you would think that the "coalition" includes every country in the world except France (and sometimes Germany). Check this amusing British article as an antidote to that:

What can Eritrea possibly do to help the US in Iraq?

It's a truism that the victors write the history. Wikipedia is one of the first chances we've had to let the whole world write the history -- let's take advantage of that! Not just facts, but an attempt to find the facts that one country's press can't or won't mention, but another's might.

SteverapaportSteverapaport

I'm basing all the stuff I include on BBC reports, cross-checked with whatever other news sites I can find (mostly CNN). I only put something in once two sites at least have mentioned it, and if it seems questionable, I attribute it. If you want to put in things *actually happening in the course of the invasion* (since that's all this article covers now) that have been missed and that ought to be here, go ahead! It's a wiki, after all :). --AW

Have you considered that maybe CNN and BBC were not entirely reliable to express every side points of view ?

Once again: this article isn't expressing anyone's point of view. It's recording actual events. If you can cast sufficient doubt on whether anything reported to have happened in this article actually did, feel free to explain and remove it. If you think there are actual events in the invasion which have taken place and are not on this page, add them. --AW

I am glad to hear that. I am probably dreaming when I have the feeling to read a pro-coalition side view in it. Why is there no mention it was saddam and his sons who where the goal target on the first bombings ? Why is there no mention of the fact saddam appeared on tv at least 2 times since the war started ?

I don't see that either of those are pro- or con- anybody, they're just omissions! I'm doing my best here, but I'm not perfect. I missed those, so Why not just add them yourself, instead of complaining here? This isn't "my" article, it's a wikipedia article. Yeesh. --AW

sorry. since you have been writing most of the new article, I can't help calling it yours. Why did you not moved the previous one, instead of merely doing a copy/paste. It would have preserved the history. It is now a left over in an article, which as you state yourself hold little in common with the previous one. Why did you do that ? Making the history of an article disappear is a real loss. *I* complain because this article is oriented imho, and am getting tired to see my stuff removed for being poorly written.

Could you precisely tell in which articles you moved 90% of the content of this articel ?

Almost all of it went to Preparations for 2003 invasion of Iraq. There is also important relevant stuff at Iraq disarmament crisis, United Nations actions regarding Iraq, Support and opposition for the U.S. plan to invade Iraq, Iraqi production and use of weapons of mass destruction and Worldwide government positions on war on Iraq. I think all the important stuff that used to be here is covered between those pages. I'll add them to the "also see" section on this page. --AW

OK, I've shunted most of the deleted stuff over to Preparations for 2003 invasion of Iraq. I think there's some stuff I didn't put there that probably belongs in one of the UN articles instead, will have a look at that now. I propose this article be renamed 2003 invasion of Iraq, because as I stated above, it's much less ambiguous than US invasion of Iraq. --AW

once again, why didnot you create a new article, and moved the old one ?

I've seen reports, with photos and video of Kuwaiti soldiers kneeling next to Iraqi missile fragments ,claiming that Kuwait has confirmed that 2 of the Iraqi missiles were SCUDs. The other missiles are believed to be other types of missiles. Anybody seen any more information about this? If so, we should add it since SCUDs are prohibited under the U.N. resolutions.

It's known that Kuwait has said that. No-one else has, however (not even the U.S. military's official spokespeople), and I think it's wise to wait for at least more than one source before adding something as verified fact on this page. --AW

Until there is confirmation from the U.S. military on whether SCUDs were fired or not, keep it out of the article. Kingturtle 01:14 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

Adam, you report that "it is clear that it is a taped statement" and then continue with "one factor supporting this theory." If it is a theory, then it is not clear. Keep hearsay and innuendo out of the articles. Kingturtle 01:14 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

Erm, I didn't write that. I took that OUT. Check the current revision, by me - that bit isn't in. It was added by the previous revision, by an IP address. --AW

of course it's taped, everything on TV is taped. rewrite this to be somehow less US-biased. remove the vague and questionable assertions by the US military'

I put in that its taped because that's the major problem with trying to determine whether or not its "new". Everything on TV is taped, but not everything is live. This was defintely not live, according to analysts. That IS important.

I don't believe it was claimed to be live on broadcast, and no-one ever reported that it was. So saying that it isn't, as if this is something exciting and important, is misleading. --AW

DIdn't say that anyone did. But as it was, the article only questioned whether or not it was a body double and said that it was determined that it probably wasn't. That gave the false impression that we know for a fact that Hussein is still alive. Thats not the case. The question of whether or not the film was live or taped is important - if it was live, then we know he was alive. If it was taped - it could have been taped six months ago and would mean absolutely nothing. I don't have a problem with the statement that was added at the end though.

Sure, which is why I didn't remove the segment completely. I just rewrote it, rephrasing the basic information - we don't know when the statement was recorded - in more neutral terms. --AW

re: vague assertions by the US military... whats wrong with saying what the U.S. is saying? I'm attributing the statements to the US. Just as IRaqi statements are attributed to Iraq. I don't see any difference.

This is an article about the actual EVENTS of the invasion. If we included everything everyone said, we'd be here for the rest of eternity, and the article would be full of useless hearsay. Statements should only be included when they are the positions of each side on an actual, solid event (a missile attack, an incident in a particular city, for instance) - not something vague like the state of Iraqi command.

If you say so.. I guess you're in charge. Personally, I think Iraq saying that US forces have not set foot on Iraqi soil and the US saying that Iraq's military is breaking from within are pretty important statements.

No! No-one's in charge! This is an anarcho-syndicalist collective, this is! ;). In a sense you're right, but remember that this is an *encyclopaedia*, not a news report. Right now, what the US and Iraq say is kind of interesting to people, and it's certainly appropriate content for a news report. I'm trying very hard to keep this page not a news report, though, but more what a wikipedia article on the topic ought to be, in my personal opinion - a quite controlled attempt to present the actual concrete facts of what's happening in the invasion itself. Iraq says one thing, the U.S. says another - in a couple of days we'll generally know for sure either way, so we may as well wait for that point then write it down than have to keep chasing around changing people's statements. --AW

Removed "Coalition forces were greeted with cheers and hugs from Iraqi citizens as they took control of the city." as I've not seen anyone report this (let alone as fact and not hearsay), not even Fox News. If anyone can verify this, feel free to put it back. --AW

It was reported on MSNBC (with visuals of Iraqis helping marines tear down enormous portraits of Saddam Hussein) but if you don't want it in the article, that's fine. -- Someone else 09:20 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

Ah, fair enough, I haven't checked MSNBC. Seems odd that no-one else seems to mention it, though. Go ahead and put it back in if you want, but maybe since MSNBC is the only source, it should be attributed ("MSNBC reported that...") --AW

I've seen it reported. (Australian commercial TV would report anything.) But it's just a propaganda claim. The accompanying footage of three people waving was about as convincing as one of Saddam's speeches. It may be true. It may not. We have absolutely no way of knowing at this stage. It's just the inevitable PR guff that you get in any war. Wait a few weeks longer and all will become clear. Till then, let's just print the stuff we know. Tannin

Yes, this was the general position I was working from when I took it out. But things like this do happen in wars, and if the report was sufficiently convincing (detailed eyewitness reports, pictures, something like that) it might be worth reporting here. But if not, I agree with you, Tannin. --AW

I've seen a couple of articles on the net (which are probably long gone with newer information by now) that said elderly women were hugging coalition soldiers.

Um, if the following is included..

According to the Iraqi Minister for information, strikes have made 207 civil casualties in the capital

..Shouldn't we also mention that the Iraqi Minister of Information made a number of other statements that were completely and totally false - like US forces are retreating, we've killed 5 tanks, coalition forces have sustained a number of casualties, they haven't been able to hold cities in IRaq, they've captured civilians and pretended that they captured soldiers, etc, etc, etc. It seems like this claim is questionable to say the least, in light of the other claims he made. (I watched his statement in its entirety by the way)