This Day In Iraqi History - Jul 19

1920 British defeated tribal fighters at Battle of Ahrdiyat

1921 Royal Iraqi Military College opened

1988 Iraq used poison gas against Kurdish villages

1988 Iraq took Dehloran Iran 20,000 Iranian casualties 6000 captured

1991 UN complained Baghdad blocking it from helping displaced in southern marshes

1991 Demonstration in Kurdistan over food shortages led to police firing into crowd

            Led to 2 days of fighting with 100 killed

2002 MI6 head Dearlove said US already decided on military action to remove Saddam

            talk was now about how and when

2002 Gen Franks briefed Bush on Running Start war plan Would have enough forces

            in theater for 100,000 to start operations

2003 On defensive over not finding WMD White House released parts of 02 National

            Intel Est that Iraq was rebuilding its WMD and nuke programs

2003 US began asking UN for help in Iraq after it spurned its role immediately before

            and after invasion

2004 Carnegie pre-2002 US intel on Iraq WMD generally good 02-03 reporting became

more certain beyond evidence Bush admin misrepresented threat posed by Iraq WMD and nuke program UN inspectors proved accurate that Iraq didn’t have WMD or nuke programs nor stocks

2005 US complained to Iran about supplying EFPs to militias

(Musings On Iraq interview with Galen Wright of Arkenstone blog on on Iranian arms shipments to Iraqi militias) 

2005 2 Sunni members of constitutional committee Issa and Obeidi were assassinated

            Sunni delegation suspended work afterward

2005 Iraq-Iran signed deal for Iraq to export 150,000 bar/day of oil to Iranian refinery

            in Abadan and send refined products back to Iraq

2006 Report Iraqi govt told civilians in Baghdad to check IDs of ISF to make sure they

            were real not death squads or insurgents

2006 NSC memo Maliki govt struggling to implement policy and deal with security

Said Interior Min making violence worse Called for review of US Iraq strategy Suggested troop increase might be necessary

2008 Gen Petraeus said Al Qaeda was changing focus from Iraq to Afghanistan

(Musings On Iraq article on decline of insurgency)

2017 Salahaddin Gov Jabouri arrested over corruption charges

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