Coordinates	°′″N°′″N
Native name
Conventional long name	Republic of Iraq
Common name	Iraq
Image coat	Coat_of_arms_of_Iraq.svg
National motto	الله أكبر (Arabic)''"Allahu Akbar"''(transliteration)"God is the Greatest"
National anthem	File:United States Navy Band - Mawtini.ogg''Mawtini''(موطني‎)''"My Homeland"''
Capital	Baghdad
Official languages	ArabicKurdish
Demonym	Iraqi
Largest city	capital
Government type
Leader title1	President
Leader title2	Prime Minister
Leader title3	Speaker of Council of Representatives
Leader name1	Jalal Talabani
Leader name2	Nouri al-Maliki
Leader name3	Usama al-Nujayfi
Area rank	50th
Area magnitude	1 E11
Area km2	438,317
Area sq mi	169,234
Percent water	1.1
Population estimate	30,399,572
Population estimate rank	39th
Population estimate year	2011
Population density km2	73.5
Population density sq mi	187.6
Population density rank	125th
Gdp ppp	$125.665 billion
Gdp ppp rank	63rd
Gdp ppp year	2011
Gdp ppp per capita	$3,826
Gdp ppp per capita rank	126th
Gdp nominal year	2011
Gdp nominal	$108.418 billion
Gdp nominal rank	62nd
Gdp nominal per capita	$3,301
Gdp nominal per capita rank	110th
Sovereignty type	Independence
Established event2	from the
Established date2	3 October 1932
Established event3	Republic
Established date3	14 July 1958
Established event4	Current constitution
Established date4	15 October 2005
Hdi	0.573
Hdi year	2011
Hdi category	132nd
Fsi	111.4 2.4
Fsi year	2007
Fsi rank	2nd
Fsi category	Alert
Currency	Iraqi dinar
Currency code	IQD
Country code	IRQ
Time zone	GMT+3
Utc offset	+3
Time zone dst	not observed
Utc offset dst	+3
Drives on	right
Cctld	.iq
Calling code	964 }}

Iraq ( or ; ); officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: '''', , '''') is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.

Iraq borders Syria to the northwest, Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Jordan to the southwest and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to the south. Iraq has a narrow section of coastline measuring on the northern Persian Gulf. The capital city, Baghdad is in the center-east of the country.

Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run through the center of Iraq, flowing from northwest to southeast. These provide Iraq with agriculturally capable land and contrast with the steppe and desert landscape that covers most of Western Asia.

Historically, Iraq has been known by the Greek toponym 'Mesopotamia' ''(Land between the rivers)'' and has been home to continuous successive civilizations since the 6th millennium BC. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is often referred to as the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of writing, law and the wheel. At different periods in its history, Iraq was the center of the indigenous Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Abbasid empires. It was also part of the Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Mongol, Safavid, Afsharid, and Ottoman empires, and under British control as a League of Nations mandate.

Iraq's modern borders were demarcated in 1920 by the League of Nations when the Ottoman Empire was divided by the Treaty of Sèvres. Iraq was placed under the authority of the United Kingdom as the British Mandate of Mesopotamia. A monarchy was established in 1921 and the Kingdom of Iraq gained independence from Britain in 1932. In 1958, the monarchy was overthrown and the Republic of Iraq was created. Iraq was controlled by the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party from 1968 until 2003. After an invasion led by American and British forces, the Ba'ath Party was removed from power and Iraq came under a military occupation by a multinational coalition. Sovereignty was transferred to the Iraqi Interim Government in June 2004. A new constitution was then approved by referendum and a new Government of Iraq was elected. Foreign troops remained in Iraq after the establishment of a new government due to an insurgency that developed shortly after the invasion, with violence peaking in mid 2007. In August 2010, the U.S. became the last member of the coalition to cease combat operations in Iraq and over one year later, in December 2011, the last U.S. troops left the country, bringing an end to the Iraq War.

==Etymology== The Arabic name '''' has been in use since before the 6th century. There are several suggested origins for the name. One dates to the Sumerian city of Uruk (Biblical Hebrew ''Erech'') and is thus ultimately of Sumerian origin, as ''Uruk'' was the Akkadian name for the Sumerian city of '''', containing the Sumerian word for "city", UR. According to Professor Wilhelm Eilers, "The name al-‘Irāq, for all its Arabic appearance, is derived from Middle Persian ''erāq'' for lowlands".

Mesopotamia has always been called "''the land of Iraq''" in Arabic, meaning "''the fertile''" or "''deep-rooted land''". During the medieval period, there was a region called ''ʿIrāq ʿArabī'' ("Arabian Iraq") for lower Mesopotamia and ''ʿIrāq ʿajamī'' ("Persian Iraq" or "Foreign Iraq"), for the region now situated in Central and Western Iran. The term historically included the plain south of the Hamrin Mountains and did not include the northernmost and westernmost parts of the modern territory of Iraq.

As an Arabic word, عراق means ''hem, shore, bank, or edge'', so that the name by folk etymology came to be interpreted as "the escarpment", viz. at the south and east of the Jazira Plateau, which forms the northern and western edge of the "al-Iraq arabi" area.

The Arabic pronunciation is . In English, it is either (the only pronunciation listed in the Oxford English Dictionary and the first one in Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary) or (listed first by MQD), the American Heritage Dictionary, and the Random House Dictionary. is frequently heard in US media.

History

Ancient Iraq

Iraq has the common epithet, the "Cradle of Civilization", as it was home to the earliest known civilization, the Sumerian civilization, which arose in the fertile Tigris-Euphrates river valley of southern Iraq in the Chalcolithic (Ubaid period). It was here in the late 4th millennium BC, that the world's first writing system and recorded history itself were born. The Sumerian civilization flourished for over 3,000 years and was succeeded by the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 24th century BC. Over two centuries of Akkadian dominance was followed by a Sumerian Renaissance in the 21st century BC. An Elamite invasion in 2004 BC brought the Third Dynasty of Ur to an end. By the 21st century BC, a new Akkadian civilization, Assyria, had risen to dominance in northern Iraq, and by the 19th century BC a contemporaneous Amorite state, Babylonia, had formed in southern Iraq.

Iraq was to be dominated by the Assyrians and Babylonians for the next 14 centuries, and under the Babylonian empire of Hammurabi, the Assyrian Empires of 1365 - 1076 BC and the Neo Assyrian Empire of 911 - 609 BC, and the final Babylonian empire of 620- 539 BC Iraq became a centre of world power. The Neo Assyrian Empire in particular put Iraq at the heart of a massive empire stretching from the Caucasus to Egypt and Arabia, and from Cyprus to Persia.

In the 6th century BC, Cyrus the Great of neighbouring Persia defeated the Neo-Babylonian Empire at the Battle of Opis and Iraq was subsumed into the Achaemenid Empire for nearly four centuries. In the late 4th century BC, Alexander the Great conquered the region, putting it under Hellenistic Seleucid rule for nearly two centuries. The Parthians conquered the region during the reign of Mithridates I of Parthia (r. 171–138 BC). From Syria, the Romans invaded the region several times. Christianity began to take hold in Iraq (particularly in Assyria) between the 1st and 3rd centuries, and Assyria became a center of the Church of the East. The Sassanid Persians under Ardashir I destroyed the Parthian Empire and conquered the region in 224 AD. The region was thus a province of the Persian Empire for four centuries, until the Muslim conquest of Persia in the 7th century, although a number of indigenous states evolved during the Parthian era, such as Adiabene, Osroene and Hatra.

Islamic Golden Age

The Islamic conquest in the 7th century established Islam in Iraq. Under the Rashidun Caliphate, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law Ali moved his capital to Kufa "fi al-Iraq" when he became the fourth caliph. The Umayyad Caliphate ruled the province of Iraq from Damascus in the 7th century. (However, eventually there was a separate, independent Caliphate of Córdoba.)

The Abbasid Caliphate built the city of Baghdad in the 8th century as their capital, and it became the leading metropolis of the Arab and Muslim world for five centuries. Baghdad was the largest multicultural city of the Middle Ages, peaking at a population of more than a million, and was the centre of learning during the Islamic Golden Age. The Mongols destroyed the city during the siege of Baghdad in the 13th century.

Mongol invasions

In 1257, Hulagu Khan amassed an unusually large army, a significant portion of the Mongol Empire's forces, for the purpose of conquering Baghdad. When they arrived at the Islamic capital, Hulagu Khan demanded surrender but the last Abbasid Caliph Al-Musta'sim refused. This angered Hulagu, and, consistent with Mongol strategy of discouraging resistance, Baghdad was decimated. Estimates of the number of dead range from 200,000 to a million.

The Mongols destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate and The Grand Library of Baghdad (Arabic بيت الحكمة Bayt al-Hikma, lit., House of Wisdom), which contained countless, precious, historical documents. The city has never regained its status as major center of culture and influence. Some historians believe that the Mongol invasion destroyed much of the irrigation infrastructure that had sustained Mesopotamia for many millennia. Other historians point to soil salination as the culprit in the decline in agriculture.

The mid-14th-century Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world. The best estimate for Middle East—Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc.—is a death rate of a third.

In 1401, warlord of Mongol descent Tamerlane (Timur Lenk) invaded Iraq. After the capture of Baghdad, 20,000 of its citizens were massacred. Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him (many warriors were so scared they killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign just to ensure they had heads to present to Timur).

Ottoman Empire

During the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the Black Sheep Turkmen ruled the area now known as Iraq. In 1466, the White Sheep Turkmen defeated the Black Sheep and took control. In the 16th century, most of the territory of present-day Iraq came under the control of Ottoman Empire as the pashalik of Baghdad. Throughout most of the period of Ottoman rule (1533–1918) the territory of present-day Iraq was a battle zone between the rival regional empires and tribal alliances. The Safavid dynasty of Iran briefly asserted their hegemony over Iraq in the periods of 1508–1533 and 1622–1638.

By the 17th century, the frequent conflicts with the Safavids had sapped the strength of the Ottoman Empire and had weakened its control over its provinces. The nomadic population swelled with the influx of bedouins from Najd, in the Arabian Peninsula. Bedouin raids on settled areas became impossible to curb.

During the years 1747–1831 Iraq was ruled by the Mamluk officers of Circassian origin who succeeded in obtaining autonomy from the Ottoman Porte, suppressed tribal revolts, curbed the power of the Janissaries, restored order and introduced a program of modernization of economy and military. In 1831, the Ottomans managed to overthrow the Mamluk regime and imposed their direct control over Iraq. The population of Iraq had shrunk to under 5 million by the early 20th century.

World War I

Ottoman rule over Iraq lasted until World War I when the Ottomans sided with Germany and the Central Powers. In the Mesopotamian campaign against the Central Powers, British forces invaded the country and suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Turkish army during the Siege of Kut (1915–1916). British forces regrouped and captured Baghdad in 1917. An armistice was signed in 1918.

During World War I the Ottomans were driven from much of the area by the United Kingdom during the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The British lost 92,000 soldiers in the Mesopotamian campaign. Ottoman losses are unknown but the British captured a total of 45,000 prisoners of war. By the end of 1918 the British had deployed 410,000 men in the area, of which 112,000 were combat troops.

In 1916, the British and French made a plan for the post-war division of Western Asia under the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

After the war, the League of Nations granted France mandates over Syria and Lebanon and granted the United Kingdom mandates over Mesapotamia and Palestine (which was subsequently partitioned into two autonomous regions: Palestine and Transjordan). On 11 November 1920 Iraq became a League of Nations mandate under British control with the name "State of Iraq".

British occupation

The Sykes-Picot agreement had been made with the assent of Imperial Russia, defining their respective spheres of influence and control in West Asia after the expected downfall of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The Agreement was concluded on 16 May 1916. Britain imposed a Hāshimite monarchy on Iraq and defined the territorial limits of Iraq without taking into account the politics of the different ethnic and religious groups in the country, in particular those of the Kurds and the Assyrians to the north. During the British occupation, the Shi'ites and Kurds fought for independence.

Faced with spiraling costs and influenced by the public protestations of war hero T. E. Lawrence in ''The Times'', Britain replaced Arnold Wilson in October 1920 with new Civil Commissioner Sir Percy Cox. Cox managed to quell the rebellion, yet was also responsible for implementing the fateful policy of close cooperation with Iraq's Sunni minority.

In the Mandate period and beyond, the British supported the traditional, Sunni leadership (such as the tribal ''shaykhs'') over the growing, urban-based nationalist movement. The Land Settlement Act gave the tribal shaykhs the right to register the communal tribal lands in their own name. The Tribal Disputes Regulations gave them judiciary rights, whereas the Peasants' Rights and Duties Act of 1933 severely reduced the tenants', forbidding them to leave the land unless all their debts to the landlord had been settled. The British resorted to military force when their interests were threatened, as in the 1941 Rashīd `Alī al-Gaylānī coup. This coup led to a British invasion of Iraq using forces from the British Indian Army and the Arab Legion from Jordan.

British Mandate of Mesopotamia

It initially formed two former Ottoman ''vilayets'' (regions): Baghdad and Basra into a single country in August 1921. Five years later, in 1926, the northern vilayet of Mosul was added, forming the territorial boundaries of the modern Iraqi state. For three out of four centuries of Ottoman rule, Baghdad was the seat of administration for the vilayets of Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra. During the mandate, British colonial administrators ruled the country, and through the use of British armed forces, suppressed Arab and Kurdish rebellions against the occupation. They established the Hashemite king, Faisal, who had been forced out of Syria by the French, as their client ruler. Likewise, British authorities selected Sunni Arab elites from the region for appointments to government and ministry offices.

Kingdom of Iraq

Britain granted independence to Iraq in 1932, on the urging of King Faisal, though the British retained military bases and transit rights for their forces. King Ghazi ruled as a figurehead after King Faisal's death in 1933, while undermined by attempted military coups, until his death in 1939. Ghazi was followed by his underage son, Faisal II. 'Abd al-Ilah served as Regent during Faisal's minority.

On 1 April 1941, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and members of the Golden Square staged a coup d'état and overthrew the government of 'Abd al-Ilah. During the subsequent Anglo-Iraqi War, the United Kingdom invaded Iraq for fear that the Rashid Ali government might cut oil supplies to Western nations because of his links to the Axis powers. The war started on 2 May and an armistice was signed 31 May.

A military occupation followed the restoration of the pre-coup government of the Hashemite monarchy. The occupation ended on 26 October 1947. The rulers during the occupation and the remainder of the Hashemite monarchy were Nuri as-Said, the autocratic Prime Minister, who also ruled from 1930–1932, and 'Abd al-Ilah, the former Regent who now served as an adviser to King Faisal II.

Republic of Iraq

The reinstated Hashemite monarchy lasted until 1958, when it was overthrown by a coup d'etat of the Iraqi Army, known as the 14 July Revolution. The coup brought Brigadier General Abd al-Karim Qasim to power. He withdrew from the Baghdad Pact and established friendly relations with the Soviet Union, but his government lasted only until the February 1963 coup, when it was overthrown by Colonel Abdul Salam Arif. Salam Arif died in 1966 and his brother, Abdul Rahman Arif, assumed the presidency.

In 1968, Abdul Rahman Arif was overthrown by the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. Ahmed Hasan Al-Bakir became the first Ba'ath President of Iraq but then the movement gradually came under the control of Saddam Hussein, who acceded to the presidency and control of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), then Iraq's supreme executive body, in July 1979.

In 1977, the Iraqi government ordered the construction of Osirak at the Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, south-east of Baghdad. It was a 40 MW light-water nuclear materials testing reactor (MTR). In 1981, Israeli aircraft bombed the facility, claiming that it acted in self-defense, and that the reactor had "less than a month to go" before "it might have become critical."

Iran-Iraq War

In 1979, Saddam Hussein took power as Iraqi President after overthrowing his close friend and the leader of his party (Ahmed Hasan Al-Bakr) and killing and arresting his leadership rivals. Shortly after his taking power, the political situation in Iraq's neighbor Iran changed drastically after the success of the Iranian Revolution of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which resulted in a Shi'ite Muslim theocratic state being established. This was seen as a dangerous change in the eyes of the Iraqi government, as Iraq too had a Shi'ite majority and was ruled by Hussein's government which, apart from having numerous Sunnis occupying leading positions, had a pan-Arab but non-religious ideology.

This left the country's Shiite population split between the members and supporters of the Ba'ath Party, and those who sympathized with the Iranian position. In 1980, Saddam claimed that Iranian forces were trying to topple his government and declared war on Iran. Saddam Hussein supported the Iranian Islamic socialist organization called the People's Mujahedin of Iran which opposed the Iranian government. During the Iran–Iraq War Iraqi forces attacked Iranian soldiers and civilians with chemical weapons.

The war ended in stalemate in 1988, largely due to American and Western support for Iraq. This was part of the US policy of "dual containment" of Iraq and Iran. Between half a million and 1.5 million people from both sides died in the 1980–1988 war.

al-Anfal campaign

Saddam's regime was notorious for its human rights abuses with the most large-scale and systematic being the Al-Anfal Campaign, a genocidal campaign that targeted the Kurdish population in Iraq. The campaign led by Saddam Hussein's military commander and first cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, led to the killing of 50,000 - 100,000 civilians.

The Anfal Campaign began in 1986 and lasted until 1989 and included a series of military operations, abductions, transfers and internal displacements, executions, and chemical weapons use. Attacks were launched against approximately 3000 to 4000 Kurdish villages in areas of northern Iraq and forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands among the country's Kurdish population. The most infamous chemical attack was on the Kurdish town of Halabja, which al-Majid tried to justify as a punishment for elements of Kurdish support of Iran.

Gulf War

In 1990, Iraq was faced with economic disaster following the end of the Iran–Iraq War. Kuwait, its small southern neighbor, had increased its production of oil, which kept oil revenues relatively low for Iraq. The Iraqi government also claimed that Kuwait was illegally slant drilling its oil wells into Iraqi territory, a practice which it demanded be stopped; Kuwait rejected this claim. In August 1990, Iraq followed this by invading Kuwait. The Iraqi military rapidly occupied the country, and Hussein declared that Kuwait had ceased to exist, becoming Iraq's 19th province. This brought heavy objections from many countries and the United Nations.

The UN agreed to pass economic sanctions against Iraq and demanded its immediate withdrawal from Kuwait (see Iraq sanctions). Iraq refused and the UN Security Council in 1991 unanimously voted for military action against Iraq. The United Nations Security Council, under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, adopted Resolution 678, authorizing U.N. member states to use "all necessary means" to "restore international peace and security in the area." The United States, which had enormous vested interests in the oil supplies of the Persian Gulf region, led an international coalition into Kuwait and Iraq.

The coalition forces entered the war with more advanced weaponry than that of Iraq, though Iraq's military was one of the largest armed forces in Western Asia at the time. Despite being a large military force, the Iraqi army was no match for the advanced weaponry of the coalition forces and the air superiority that the coalition forces provided. The coalition forces proceeded with a bombing campaign targeting military including an occupied public shelter in Baghdad.

Iraq responded to the invasion by launching Scud missile attacks against Israel and Saudi Arabia. Hussein hoped that by attacking Israel, the Israeli military would be drawn into the war, which he believed would rally anti-Israeli sentiment in neighboring Arab countries and cause those countries to support Iraq. However, Hussein's gamble failed, as Israel reluctantly accepted a U.S. demand to remain out of the conflict to avoid inflaming tensions. The Iraqi armed forces were quickly destroyed, and Hussein eventually accepted the inevitable and ordered a withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Before the forces were withdrawn, however, Hussein ordered them to sabotage Kuwait's oil wells, which resulted in hundreds of wells being set ablaze, causing an economic and ecological disaster in Kuwait.

After the decisive military defeat, the agreement to a ceasefire on February 28, and political maneuvering, the UN Security Council continued to press its demands that Hussein accept previous UN Security Council Resolutions, as stated in UNSCR 686. By April, UNSCR 687 recognized Kuwait's sovereignty had been reinstated, and established the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM). Two days later, UNSCR 688 added that Iraq must cease violent repression of ethnic and religious minorities.

The aftermath of the war saw the Iraqi military, especially its air force, destroyed. In return for peace, Iraq was forced to dismantle all chemical and biological weapons it possessed, and end any attempt to create or purchase nuclear weapons, to be assured by the allowing UN weapons inspectors to evaluate the dismantlement of such weapons. Finally, Iraq would face sanctions if it disobeyed any of the demands.

Shortly after the war ended in 1991, Shia Muslim and Kurdish Iraqis engaged in protests against Hussein's regime, resulting in an intifada. Hussein responded with violent repression against Shia Muslims, and the protests came to an end. It is estimated that as many as 100,000 people were killed. The US, UK, France and Turkey claiming authority under UNSCR 688, established the Iraqi no-fly zones to protect Kurdish and Shiite populations from attacks by the Hussein regime's aircraft.

UN sanctions

While Iraq had agreed to UNSCR 687, the Iraqi government sometimes worked with inspectors, but ultimately were judged to have failed to comply with disarmament terms. As a result, economic sanctions against Iraq continued. After the war, Iraq was accused of breaking its obligations throughout the 1990s, including the discovery in 1993 of a plan to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush, and the withdrawal of Richard Butler's UNSCOM weapon inspectors in 1998 after the Iraqi government claimed some inspectors were spies for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. On multiple occasions throughout the disarmament crisis, the UN passed further resolutions (see United Nations Resolutions concerning Iraq) compelling Iraq to comply with the terms of the ceasefire resolutions.

Studies dispute the number of children who died in southern and central Iraq during the sanctions.]] With possible humanitarian and/or economic and/or propaganda concerns in mind, UNSCR 706 and UNSCR 712 allowed Iraq to sell oil in exchange for humanitarian aid. This was later turned into the Oil-for-Food Programme by UNSCR 986. Over the years, U.S. land forces were deployed to the Iraq border, and bombings were carried out to try to pressure Hussein to comply with UN resolutions.

As a result of these repeated violations, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of Defense William Cohen, and US National Security Advisor Sandy Berger held an international town hall meeting to discuss possible war with Iraq, which seemed to have little public support. In October 1998, U.S. President Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, calling for "regime change" in Iraq, and initiated Operation Desert Fox. Following Operation Desert Fox, and end to partial cooperation from Iraq prompted UNSCR 1284, disbanding UNSCOM and replacing it with United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC).

The George W. Bush administration made a number of allegations against Iraq, including that Iraq was acquiring uranium from Niger and that Iraq had secret weapons laboratories in trailers and isolated facilities throughout Iraq; none of these allegations have proven true. Saddam Hussein, under pressure from the U.S. and the U.N., finally agreed to allow weapons inspectors to return to Iraq in 2002, but by that time the Bush administration had already begun pushing for war.

In June 2002, Operation Southern Watch transitioned to Operation Southern Focus, bombing sites around Iraq. The first CIA team entered Iraq on July 10, 2002. This team was composed of elite CIA Special Activities Division and the U.S. Military's elite Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) operators. Together, they prepared the battle space of the entire country for conventional U.S. Military forces.

Their efforts also organized the Kurdish Peshmerga to become the northern front of the invasion and eventually defeat Ansar Al-Islam in Northern Iraq before the invasion and Saddam's forces in the north. The battle led to the killing of a substantial number of militants and the uncovering of what was claimed to be a chemical weapons facility at Sargat. In October 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, and in November the UN Security Council passed UNSCR 1441.

US-led invasion

On March 20, 2003, a United States-organized coalition invaded Iraq, with the stated reason that Iraq had failed to abandon its nuclear and chemical weapons development program in violation of U.N. Resolution 687. The United States asserted that because Iraq was in material breach of Resolution 687, the armed forces authorization of Resolution 678 was revived. The United States further justified the invasion by claiming that Iraq had or was developing weapons of mass destruction and stating a desire to remove an oppressive dictator from power and "bring democracy to Iraq." In his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, President George W. Bush declared that Iraq was a member of the "Axis of Evil", and that, like North Korea and Iran, Iraq's attempt to acquire weapons of mass destruction posed a serious threat to U.S. national security. These claims were based on documents that were provided to him by the CIA and the government of the United Kingdom. Bush added,

"Iraq continues to flaunt its hostilities toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade...This is a regime that agreed to international inspections — then kicked out inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world...By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes [Iran, Iraq and North Korea] pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred." about Iraq history

However, according to a comprehensive U.S. government report, no weapons of mass destruction have been found. There are accounts of Polish troops obtaining antiquated warheads, dating from the 1980s, two of which contained trace amounts of the nerve gas cyclosarin, but U.S. military tests found that the rounds were so deteriorated that they would "have limited to no impact if used by insurgents against coalition forces. The possible effect upon civilians was not discussed."

Occupation

Following the invasion, the United States established the Coalition Provisional Authority to govern Iraq. Government authority was transferred to an Iraqi Interim Government in June 2004, and a permanent government was elected in October 2005.

After the invasion, al-Qaeda took advantage of the national resistance to entrench itself in the country. On December 30, 2006, Saddam Hussein was hanged. Hussein's half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Hassan and former chief judge of the Revolutionary Court Awad Hamed al-Bandar were likewise executed on January 15, 2007; as was Taha Yassin Ramadan, Saddam's former deputy and former vice-president (originally sentenced to life in prison but later to death by hanging), on March 20, 2007. Ramadan was the fourth and last man in the al-Dujail trial to die by hanging for crimes against humanity.

At the Anfal genocide trial, Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid (aka Chemical Ali), former defense minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai, and former deputy Hussein Rashid Mohammed were sentenced to hang for their role in the Al-Anfal Campaign against the Kurds on June 24, 2007. Al-Majid was sentenced to death three more times: once for the 1991 suppression of a Shi'a uprising along with Abdul-Ghani Abdul Ghafur on December 2, 2008; once for the 1999 crackdown in the assassination of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad al-Sadr on March 2, 2009; and once on January 17, 2010 for the gassing of the Kurds in 1988; he was hanged over a week later on January 25.

Acts of sectarian violence have led to claims of ethnic cleansing in Iraq, and there have been many attacks on Iraqi minorities such as the Yezidis, Mandeans, Assyrians and others. A U.S. troop surge to deal with increased violence and improve security became a contentious political issue in the United States. The surge in troops was enacted in early 2007; in his September 2007 testimony to Congress, General Petraeus stated that the surge's goals were being met. Iraq also suffered a cholera outbreak in 2007.

Violence in Iraq began to decline from the summer of 2007.

The mandate of the multinational force in Iraq, last extended by UN resolution 1790, expired on December 31, 2008.

On June 29, 2009, U.S. troops formally withdrew from Baghdad streets, in accordance with former U.S. President George W. Bush's security pact with Iraq known as the Status of Forces Agreement. The SOFA pact stated, among other things, that U.S. troops will withdraw from Iraq's cities by June 30, 2009, and will leave the country on December 31, 2011. However, crime and violence initially spiked in the months following the US withdrawal from cities. As Iraqi security forces struggled to suppress the sudden influx of crime, the number of kidnappings, robberies, bomb assaults, and shootings increased dramatically. According to the Associated Press, Iraqi military spokesman Major General Qassim al-Moussawi said investigations found that 60 to 70 percent of the criminal activity is carried out by former insurgent groups or by gangs affiliated with them — partly explaining the brutality of some of the crimes. United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that the withdrawal caused a change of chemistry with “a real sense of empowerment on the part of the Iraqis.” U.S. troops continue to work with Iraqi forces after the pullout. Despite the initial increase in violence, on November 30, 2009, Iraqi Interior Ministry officials reported that the civilian death toll in Iraq fell to its lowest level in November since the 2003 invasion. On August 31, 2010, U.S. forces ended combat missions in Iraq. The war was declared formally over on December 15, 2011, and on the morning of December 18, the last U.S. troops exited over the border to Kuwait.

Geography

Iraq lies between latitudes 29° and 38° N, and longitudes 39° and 49° E (a small area lies west of 39°). Spanning , it is the 58th-largest country in the world. It is comparable in size to the US state of California, and somewhat larger than Paraguay.

Iraq mainly consists of desert , but near the two major rivers (Euphrates and Tigris) are fertile alluvial plains, as the rivers carry about of silt annually to the delta. The north of the country is mostly composed of mountains; the highest point being at point, unnamed on the map opposite, but known locally as Cheekah Dar (black tent). Iraq has a small coastline measuring along the Persian Gulf. Close to the coast and along the Shatt al-Arab (known as ''arvandrūd'': اروندرود among Iranians) there used to be marshlands, but many were drained in the 1990s.

The local climate is mostly desert, with mild to cool winters and dry, hot, cloudless summers. The northern mountainous regions (Kurdistan region هه‌رێمی کوردستان) have cold winters with occasional heavy snows, sometimes causing extensive flooding.

With its of proved oil reserves, Iraq ranks second in the world behind Saudi Arabia in the amount of Oil reserves; yet the United States Department of Energy estimates that up to 90% of the country remains unexplored. These regions could yield an additional . Iraq's oil production costs are among the lowest in the world, but only about 2,000 oil wells have been drilled in Iraq, compared with about 1 million wells in Texas alone.

Climate

Most of Iraq has a hot arid climate with subtropical influence. Summer temperatures average above for most of the country and frequently exceed . Winter temperatures infrequently exceed with maximums roughly and night-time lows . Typically precipitation is low; most places receive less than annually, with maximum rainfall occurring during the winter months. Rainfall during the summer is extremely rare, except in the far north of the country.

Government and politics

Government

The federal government of Iraq is defined under the current Constitution as an Islamic, democratic, federal parliamentary republic. The federal government is composed of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, as well as numerous independent commissions. Aside from the federal government, there are regions (made of one or more governorates), governorates, and districts within Iraq with jurisdiction over various matters as defined by law.

Governorates

Iraq is composed of eighteen governorates (or provinces) (Arabic: ''muhafadhat'', singular – ''muhafadhah'', Kurdish: پاریزگه ''Pârizgah''). The governorates are subdivided into districts (or ''qadhas''). Iraqi Kurdistan (Arbil, Duhok, Sulaymaniyah) is the only legally defined region within Iraq, with its own government and quasi-official militia.

Politics

Iraq was under Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party rule from 1968 to 2003; in 1979 Saddam Hussein took control and remained president until 2003 after which he was unseated by a US–led invasion.

On October 15, 2005, more than 63% of eligible Iraqis came out across the country to vote on whether to accept or reject the new constitution. On October 25, the vote was certified and the constitution passed with a 78% overall majority, with the percentage of support varying widely between the country's territories. The new constitution had overwhelming backing among the Shia and Ķurdish communities, but was overwhelmingly rejected by Arab Sunnis. Three majority Arab Sunni provinces rejected it (Salah ad Din with 82% against, Ninawa with 55% against, and Al Anbar with 97% against).

Under the terms the constitution, the country conducted fresh nationwide parliamentary elections on December 15 to elect a new government. The overwhelming majority of all three major ethnic groups in Iraq voted along ethnic lines, turning this vote into more of an ethnic census than a competitive election, and setting the stage for the division of the country along ethnic lines.

Iraqi politicians have been under significant threat by the various factions that have promoted violence as a political weapon. The ongoing violence in Iraq has been incited by an amalgam of religious extremists that believe an Islamic Caliphate should rule, old sectarian regime members that had ruled under Saddam that want back the power they had, and Iraqi nationalists that are fighting the U.S. military presence.

Iraq has a number of ethnic minority groups: Kurds, Assyrians, Mandeans, Iraqi Turkmen, Shabaks and Roma. These groups have not enjoyed equal status with the majority Arab populations throughout Iraq's eighty–five year history. Since the establishment of the "no–fly zones" following the Gulf War of 1990–1991, the situation of the Kurds has changed as they have established their own autonomous region. This has been a source of particular tension with Turkey.

Iraq has a very corrupt government. In 2010, according to the Failed States Index, Iraq was the world's seventh most politically unstable country. In 2008 Al Jazeera reported $13 Billion of Iraqi oil revenues in U.S. care was improperly accounted for, of which $2.6 billion is totally unaccounted for. On November 17, 2008, the U.S. and Iraq agreed to a Status of Forces Agreement, as part of the broader Strategic Framework Agreement. This agreement states "the Government of Iraq requests" U.S. forces to temporarily remain in Iraq to "maintain security and stability," and that Iraq has jurisdiction over military contractors, and US personnel when not on US bases or on–duty.

On 12 February 2009 Iraq officially became the 186th State Party to the Chemical Weapons Convention. Under the provisions of this treaty, Iraq is considered a party with declared stockpiles of chemical weapons. Because of their late accession, Iraq is the only State Party exempt from the existing time–line for destruction of their chemical weapons. Specific criteria is in development to address the unique nature of Iraqi accession.

Economy

Iraq's economy is dominated by the oil sector, which has traditionally provided about 95% of foreign exchange earnings. In the 1980s financial problems caused by massive expenditures in the eight-year war with Iran and damage to oil export facilities by Iran led the government to implement austerity measures, borrow heavily, and later reschedule foreign debt payments. Iraq suffered economic losses from the war of at least US$100 billion. After hostilities ended in 1988, oil exports gradually increased with the construction of new pipelines and restoration of damaged facilities. A combination of low oil prices, repayment of war debts (estimated at around US$3 billion a year) and the costs of reconstruction resulted in a serious financial crisis which was the main short term motivation for the invasion of Kuwait.

On November 20, 2004, the Paris Club of creditor nations agreed to write off 80% ($33 billion) of Iraq's $42 billion debt to Club members. Iraq's total external debt was around $120 billion at the time of the 2003 invasion, and had grown another $5 billion by 2004. The debt relief will be implemented in three stages: two of 30% each and one of 20%.

At the end of 2005, and in the first half of 2006, Iraq implemented a restructuring of about $20 billion of commercial debt claims on terms comparable to that of its November 2004 Paris Club agreement (i.e. with an 80% writeoff). Iraq offered to its larger claimants a U.S. dollar denominated bond maturing in 2028. Smaller commercial claimants received a cash settlement of comparable value.

Iraq has proven oil reserves of 143.1 billion barrels, the world's 2nd largest. Iraq's oil production is only about 2.9 million barrels per day, of which 1.6 – 1.7 million are exported. And it intends to increase its production to 5 million barrels per day by 2014. On June 30 and December 11, 2009, the Iraqi ministry of oil awarded service contracts to international oil companies for some of Iraq's many oil fields. Oil fields contracted include the "super-giant" Majnoon Field, Halfaya Field, West Qurna Field and Rumaila Field.

In February 2011, Citigroup included Iraq in a group of countries which it described as 'Global Growth Generators', that it argued will enjoy significant economic growth in the future.

Reconstruction

Nearly 30 years of fighting, against Iran in the 1980s and the United States after 1991, had a detrimental impact on Iraqi economic growth. Oil production remains Iraq's chief economic activity. The lack of development in other sectors has resulted in 18%–30% unemployed and a depressed per capita GDP of $4,000.

There have been attempts by the international community to improve and repair the infrastructure of Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion. Iraq was governed, after the 2003 invasion, by the Coalition Provisional Authority and, after June 28, 2004, by a series of Iraq-led governments (see Politics of Iraq). During this period, efforts were made to repair and replace damaged Iraqi infrastructure, including water supply systems, sewage treatment plants, electricity production, hospitals and health clinics, schools, housing, and transportation systems. Reconstruction efforts have also encompassed the promotion of economic development and government institutions such as the criminal justice system. While reconstruction efforts have produced some successes, problems have arisen with the implementation of internationally funded Iraq reconstruction efforts. These include inadequate security, pervasive corruption, insufficient funding and poor coordination among international agencies and local communities. Many suggest that the efforts were hampered by a poor understanding of Iraq on the part of the occupiers. As of 2010, despite improved security and billions of dollars in oil revenue, Iraq still generates about half the electricity that customers demand, leading to protests during the hot summer months.

Five years after the invasion, an estimated 2.4 million people were internally displaced (with a further two million refugees outside Iraq), four million Iraqis were considered food-insecure (a quarter of children were chronically malnourished) and only a third of Iraqi children had access to safe drinking water. Much reconstruction and humanitarian work in Iraq has been carried out by the Iraqi people in their own communities using local resources. Amongst the internally displaced, 58% rent housing, 18% live with host families or relatives, 24% live in public buildings and fewer than 1% live in tented camps.

International assistance

A major benchmark for international assistance was the Madrid Conference on Reconstruction held in Spain October 23–24, 2003 and attended by representatives over 25 nations. Funds assembled at this conference and from other sources have been administered by the United Nations and the World Bank. This assistance has primarily funded large-scale projects.

United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq focuses on implementing the International Compact with Iraq, to aid economic and political development in Iraq.

Researcher at the Overseas Development Institute have documented the challenges faced by international NGOs in carrying out their mission, leaving them unable to adequately address the humanitarian challenges in Iraq, leaving NGOs' assistance "piecemeal and largely conducted undercover, hindered by insecurity, a lack of coordinated funding, limited operational capacity and patchy information". International NGOs neutrality is argued to have been compromised due to their sudden surge in activity after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, funding by the governments of the multinational force and due to the protection provided by private security contractors and the multinational force. Thus, they have been targeted and during the first 5 years, 94 aid workers were killed, 248 injured, 24 arrested or detained and 89 kidnapped or abducted.

Demographics

colspan="4" style="text-align:center; background:#cfb;"	Population in Iraq
Year	Million
style="text-align:left;"	1971	9.7
	13.2
style="text-align:left;"	1990	18.1
style="text-align:left;"	2000	22.7
style="text-align:left;"	2009	28.9

[[File:Ethnoreligious Iraq.svg|250px|thumb|Major ethno-religious groups in Iraq ]] An April 2009 estimate of the total Iraqi population is 31,234,000. Iraq's population was estimated at only 2 million in 1878.

According to the Central Intelligence Agency, Arabs form 75%-80% of the Iraqi population, followed by 15%-20% Kurds, and Turkoman, Assyrian, or other make up 5% of the population.

Around 20,000 Marsh Arabs live in southern Iraq. The Iraqi population includes a community of around 30,000 Circassians, 20,000 Armenians, and a community of 2500 Chechens. In southern Iraq there is a community of Iraqis of African descent, a legacy of the slavery practiced in the Islamic Caliphate beginning before the Zanj Rebellion of the 9th century, and Basra's role as a key port.

Arabic and Kurdish are official languages. Aramaic and South Azeri are regional languages. Armenian and Persian are also spoken but to a lesser extent. English is the most commonly spoken European language.

Religious composition includes: Islam, 97%; Christianity or other, 3%. Three estimates of the Muslim proportions of the population are:

Shia up to 65%, Sunni about 35% (source: ''Encyclopædia Britannica'').

Shia 60%–65%, Sunni 32%–37% (source: ''CIA World Fact Book'').

Shia 65%, Sunni 35% (source: ''World Christian Encyclopedia'')

The adherents of Shia Islam in Iraq predominantly speak Arabic and a bilingual minority speak Persian, while the Iraqi Turkmen speak South Azeri and the Feyli Kurds speak Feyli, a dialect of Kurdish, almost all belong to the Twelver school. Adherents of Sunni Islam include Arabic speakers, Iraqi Turkmen (who are mostly Hanafi school), and Kurds (who are Shafi school). Whilst all Christian Iraqis consider Arabic is their main language, many of them (especially those who live in the villages of the Ninevah governorate) are also competent in Aramaic, the traditional language of Iraqi Christians which has endured throughout the centuries .

Religion

Iraq is a Shia majority country and contains the sacred Shia cities of Najaf and Karbala. Most sources estimate that around 65% of Iraqis follow Shia Islam, and around 35% follow Sunni Islam, however the question of religious demographics is controversial and some Iraqis who follow Sunni Islam dispute these figures, including an ex-Iraqi ambassador, referring to American sources. claiming that many reports only include Arab Sunnis as "Sunni", missing out the Kurdish and Turkmen Sunnis. Most Kurds are Sunnis, although the Feyli Kurds are largely Shia.

Christians have inhabited what is modern day Iraq for about 2,000 years. Assyrians (also called Syriacs and Chaldeans) most of whom are adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church, Syriac Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church of the East account for most of Iraq's Christian population, along with Armenians. Estimates for the numbers of Christians suggest a decline from 8–10% in the mid-20th century to 5% at the turn of the century, to 3% in 2008. About 600,000 Iraqi Christians have fled to Syria, Jordan or other countries or relocated to Iraqi Kurdistan.which is also the traditional homeland of the Assyrian people. There are also small populations of Mandaeans, Shabaks, Yarsan and Yezidis. The Iraqi Jewish community, numbering around 150,000 in 1941, almost entirely left the country.

In November 2006, the UNHCR estimated that 1.8 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighboring countries, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month, while another 1.6 million were displaced internally. According to official United States Citizenship and Immigration Services statistics, 58,811 Iraqis have been granted refugee-status citizenship as of May 25, 2011.

Iraqi diaspora

The dispersion of native Iraqis to other countries is known as the Iraqi diaspora. There have been many large-scale waves of emigration from Iraq, beginning early in the regime of Saddam Hussein and continuing through to 2007. The UN High Commission for Refugees has estimated that nearly two million Iraqis have fled the country after the Multi-National invasion of Iraq in 2003, mostly to Syria and Jordan. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimates an additional 1.9 million are currently displaced within the country.

In 2007, the U.N. said that about 40% of Iraq's middle class is believed to have fled and that most are fleeing systematic persecution and have no desire to return. Refugees are mired in poverty as they are generally barred from working in their host countries. Many were forced to force their women's and children into prostitution to survive.

In recent years the diaspora seems to be returning with the increased security; the Iraqi government claimed that 46,000 refugees have returned to their homes in October 2007 alone. However, more than half of Iraqi Christians have fled to neighboring countries since the start of the war, and few plan to return.

Culture

Music and dance

Iraq is known primarily for its rich maqam heritage which has been passed down orally by the masters of the maqam in an unbroken chain of transmission leading up to the present. The maqam al-Iraqi is considered to be the most noble and perfect form of maqam. As the name implies, it is native to Iraq; it has been known for approximately four hundred years in Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk. It is performed by a singer (qari’) and three instrumentalists playing santur (box zither), jawzah (rebab/spike fiddle), dumbek (goblet drum) and sometimes joined by a riqq (tambourine). Al-Chalghi al-Baghdadi is the name of the ensemble that performs this music, and al-maqam al-Iraqi is the collection of sung poems written either in one of the sixteen meters of classical Arabic or in Iraqi dialect (zuhayri). This form of art is recognized by UNESCO as “an intangible heritage of humanity”. Unfortunately, due to the catastrophic invasion of the United States, this art form is being threatened with dwindling numbers of students and masters.

Iraq is also known for an instrument called the ''oud'' (similar to a lute) and a ''rebab'' (similar to a fiddle); its stars include Ahmed Mukhtar and Munir Bashir. Until the fall of Saddam Hussein, the most popular radio station was the Voice of Youth. It played a mix of western rock, hip hop and pop music, all of which had to be imported via Jordan due to international economic sanctions. Iraq has also produced a major pan-Arab pop star-in-exile in Kathem Al Saher. The folk songs of Iraqi Turkmens are also well known, and Abdurrahman Kızılay is a leading name.

Early in the 20th century, many of the most prominent musicians in Iraq were Jewish. In 1936, Iraq Radio was established with an ensemble made up entirely of Jews, with the exception of the percussion player. The nightclubs of Baghdad also featured almost entirely Jewish musicians. At these nightclubs, ensembles consisted of oud, qanun and two percussionists, while the same format with a ney and cello were used on the radio.

One of the reasons for the predominance of Jewish instrumentalists in early 20th century Iraqi music was a prominent school for blind Jewish children, which was founded in the late 1920s. Many of the students became musicians, eventually forming the Arabic Music Ensemble Qol Yisraeli (Israel Radio).

Singers, on the other hand, were Muslim, Jewish and Christian. The most famous singer of the 1930s–1940s was perhaps the Jew Salima Pasha (later Salima Murad). The respect and adoration for Pasha were unusual at the time, since public performance by women was considered shameful and most female singers were recruited from brothels.

Numerous instrumentalists and singers of the middle and late twentieth century were trained at the Baghdad Conservatory.

For much of the 20th century, Egypt was the center for Arab popular music, with only a few stars from other countries finding international success. The most famous early composer from Iraq was Ezra Aharon, an oud player, while the most prominent instrumentalist was Daoud Al-Kuwaiti. Daoud and his brother Saleh formed the official ensemble for the Iraqi radio station and were responsible for introducing the cello and ney into the traditional ensemble.

In recent years the Iraqi school of oud players has become very prominent, with players such as Salman Shukur and Munir Bashir developing a very refined and delicate style of playing combining older Arabic elements with more recent Anatolian influences.

Art and architecture

Some important cultural institutions in the capital include the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra – rehearsals and performances were briefly interrupted during the Occupation of Iraq but have since returned to normal. The National Theatre of Iraq was looted during the 2003 invasion, but efforts are underway to restore it. The live theatre scene received a boost during the 1990s when UN sanctions limited the import of foreign films. As many as 30 movie theatres were reported to have been converted to live stages, producing a wide range of comedies and dramatic productions.

Institutions offering cultural education in Baghdad include the Academy of Music, Institute of Fine Arts and the Music and Ballet school Baghdad. Baghdad also features a number of museums including the National Museum of Iraq – which houses the world's largest and finest collection of artifacts and relics of Ancient Iraqi civilizations; some of which were stolen during the Occupation of Iraq.

The capital, Ninus or Nineveh, was taken by the Medes under Cyaxares, and some 200 years after Xenophon passed over its site, then mere mounds of earth. It remained buried until 1845, when Botta and Layard discovered the ruins of the Assyrian cities. The principal remains are those of Khorsabad, N.E. of Mosul; of Nimroud, supposed to be the ancient Calah; and of Kouyunjik, in all probability the ancient Nineveh. In these cities are found fragments of several great buildings which seem to have been palace-temples. They were constructed chiefly of sun-dried bricks, and all that remains of them is the lower part of the walls, decorated with sculpture and paintings, portions of the pavements, a few indications of the elevation, and some interesting works connected with the drainage.

Sport

Football is the most popular sport in Iraq. Football is a considerable uniting factor in Iraq following years of war and unrest. Basketball, swimming, weightlifting, bodybuilding, boxing, kick boxing and tennis are also popular sports.

The Iraqi Football Association () is the governing body of football in Iraq, controlling the Iraqi National Team and the Iraqi Premier League (also known as Dawri Al-Nokba). It was founded in 1948, and has been a member of FIFA since 1950 and the Asian Football Confederation since 1971. The Iraqi National Football Team are the 2007 AFC Asian Cup Champions after defeating Saudi Arabia in the final.

Cuisine

Iraqi cuisine has a long history going back some 10,000 years – to the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians and Ancient Persians. Tablets found in ancient ruins in Iraq show recipes prepared in the temples during religious festivals – the first cookbooks in the world. Ancient Iraq, or ''Mesopotamia'', was home to many sophisticated and highly advanced civilizations, in all fields of knowledge – including the culinary arts. However, it was in the medieval era when Baghdad was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate that the Iraqi kitchen reached its zenith. Today, the cuisine of Iraq reflects this rich inheritance as well as strong influences from the culinary traditions of neighbouring Turkey, Iran and the Greater Syria area. Some characteristic ingredients of Iraqi cuisine include – vegetables such as aubergine, tomato, okra, onion, potato, courgette, garlic, peppers and chilli, cereals such as rice, bulgur wheat and barley, pulses and legumes such as lentils, chickpeas and cannellini, fruits such as dates, raisins, apricots, figs, grapes, melon, pomegranate and citrus fruits, especially lemon and lime.

Other Iraqi culinary essentials include butter, olive oil, olives, tamarind, vermicelli, tahini, pistachios, almonds, honey, date syrup, yogurt and rose water, cheeses such as baladi, feta and halloumi, and herbs and spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, fenugreek, cumin, oregano, saffron, baharat, sumac and za'atar. Similarly with other countries of Western Asia, chicken and especially lamb are the favourite meats. Most dishes are served with rice – usually Basmati, grown in the marshes of southern Iraq. Bulgur wheat is used in many dishes – having been a staple in the country since the days of the Ancient Assyrians.

Meals begin with appetizers and salads – known as ''Mezze''. Some popular dishes include ''Kebab'' (often marinated with garlic, lemon and spices, then grilled), ''Shawarma'' (grilled meat sandwich wrap, similar to ''Döner kebab''), ''Bamia'' (lamb, okra and tomato stew), ''Quzi'' (lamb with rice, almonds, raisins and spices), ''Falafel'' (fried chickpea patties served with ''amba'' and salad in ''pita''), ''Kibbeh'' (minced meat ground with bulghur or rice and spices), ''Masgouf'' (grilled fish with pepper and tamarind), and ''Maqluba'' (a rice, lamb, tomato and aubergine dish). Stuffed vegetable dishes such as ''Dolma'' and ''Mahshi'' are also popular.

See also

Mesopotamia

Fertile Crescent

Iraqi Kurdistan

References

Bibliography

Shadid, Anthony 2005. ''Night Draws Near''. Henry Holt and Co., NY, U.S. ISBN 0-8050-7602-6

Hanna Batatu, "The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq", Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978

Charles Glass, "The Northern Front: A Wartime Diary"' Saqi Books, London, 2004, ISBN 0863567703

A Dweller in Mesopotamia, being the adventures of an official artist in the garden of Eden, by Donald Maxwell, 1921. ''(a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu & layered PDF format)''

By Desert Ways to Baghdad, by Louisa Jebb (Mrs. Roland Wilkins) With illustrations and a map, 1908 (1909 ed). ''(a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu & layered PDF format)''

External links

; Government

National Media Center of Iraq

Presidency of Iraq

Cabinet of Iraq

Parliament of Iraq

Chief of State and Cabinet Members

; General information

Category:Arabic-speaking countries and territories Category:Fertile Crescent Category:Federal republics Category:Levant Category:Member states of OPEC Category:Member states of the Arab League Category:Member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Category:Member states of the United Nations Category:Mesopotamia Category:Middle Eastern countries Category:Near Eastern countries Category:Persian Gulf countries Category:States and territories established in 1932 Category:Western Asia Category:Western Asian countries

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Coordinates	°′″N°′″N
order	44th
office	President of the United States
term start	January 20, 2009
vicepresident	Joe Biden
predecessor	George W. Bush
birth date	August 04, 1961
birth place	Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
birthname	Barack Hussein Obama II
nationality	American
party	Democratic
spouse	Michelle Obama (m. 1992)
children	Malia (b.1998) Sasha (b.2001)
residence	The White House
alma mater	Occidental CollegeColumbia University (B.A.)Harvard Law School (J.D.)
profession	Community organizerAttorneyAuthorConstitutional law professorUnited States SenatorPresident of the United States
religion	Christian, former member of United Church of Christ
signature	Barack Obama signature.svg
website	WhiteHouse.gov
footnotes	}}

The Presidency of Barack Obama began at noon EST on January 20, 2009, when he became the 44th President of the United States. Obama was a United States Senator from Illinois at the time of his victory over Arizona Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Barack Obama is the first African-American president of the United States, as well as the first born in Hawaii.

His policy decisions have addressed a global financial crisis and have included changes in tax policies, legislation to reform the United States health care industry, foreign policy initiatives and the phasing out of detention of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He attended the G-20 London summit and later visited U.S. troops in Iraq. On the tour of various European countries following the G-20 summit, he announced in Prague that he intended to negotiate substantial reduction in the world's nuclear arsenals, en route to their eventual extinction. In October 2009, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

Transition period

The presidential transition period began following Obama's election to the presidency on November 4, 2008. The Obama-Biden Transition Project was co-chaired by John Podesta, Valerie Jarrett, and Pete Rouse. During the transition period, Obama announced his nominations for his Cabinet and administration. Shortly after the election on November 4, Obama chose Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois as White House Chief of Staff.

Cabinet nominations included former Democratic primary opponents Hillary Rodham Clinton for Secretary of State and Bill Richardson for Secretary of Commerce (although the latter withdrew on January 4, 2009). Obama appointed Eric Holder as his Attorney General, the first African-American appointed to that position. He also nominated Timothy F. Geithner to serve as Secretary of the Treasury. On December 1, Obama announced that he had asked Robert Gates to remain as Secretary of Defense, making Gates the first Defense head to carry over from a president of a different party. He nominated former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan Rice to the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, which he restored to a Cabinet-level position.

During his transition, he maintained a website Change.gov, on which he wrote blogs to readers and uploaded video addresses by many of the members of his new cabinet. He announced strict rules for federal lobbyists, restricting them from financially contributing to his administration and forcing them to stop lobbying while working for him. The website also allowed individuals to share stories and visions with each other and the transition team in what was called the Citizen's Briefing Book, which was given to Obama shortly after his inauguration. Most of the information from Change.gov was transferred to the official White House website whitehouse.gov just after Obama's inauguration.

Inauguration

Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. He officially assumed the presidency at 12:00 noon, EST, and completed the oath of office at 12:05 PM, EST. He delivered his inaugural address immediately following his oath. After his speech, he went to the President's Room in the House Wing of the Capitol and signed three documents: a commemorative proclamation, a list of Cabinet appointments, and a list of sub-Cabinet appointments, before attending a luncheon with congressional and administration leaders and invited guests. To commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of former President Abraham Lincoln, the same Bible that was used for Lincoln's inauguration was used in Obama's inauguration.

In administering the oath, Chief Justice John G. Roberts misplaced the word "faithfully" and erroneously replaced the phrase "President of the United States" with "President to the United States" before restating the phrase correctly; since Obama initially repeated the incorrect form, some scholars argued the President should take the oath again. On January 21, Roberts readministered the oath to Obama in a private ceremony in the White House Map Room, making him the seventh U.S. president to retake the oath; White House Counsel Greg Craig said Obama took the oath from Roberts a second time out of an "abundance of caution".

First 100 days

Expectations

Obama's 100th day in office was April 29, 2009. In his first post-election interview with ''60 Minutes'', Obama said that he has been studying Franklin Roosevelt's first 100 days, while adding, "The first hundred days is going to be important, but it's probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the difference."

Obama's first 100 days were highly anticipated ever since he became the presumptive nominee. Several news outlets created web pages dedicated to covering the subject. Commentators weighed in on challenges and priorities within domestic, foreign, economic, and environmental policy. CNN lists a number of economic issues that "Obama and his team will have to tackle in their first 100 days", foremost among which is passing and implementing a recovery package to deal with the financial crisis. Clive Stafford Smith, a British human rights lawyer, expressed hopes that the new president will close Guantanamo Bay detention camp in his first 100 days in office. After aides of the president announced his intention to give a major foreign policy speech in the capital of an Islamic country, there were speculations in Jakarta that he might return to his former home city within the first 100 days.

''The New York Times'' devoted a five-part series, which was spread out over two weeks, to anticipatory analysis of Obama's first hundred days. Each day, the analysis of a political expert was followed by freely edited blog postings from readers. The writers compared Obama's prospects with the situations of Franklin D. Roosevelt (January 16, Jean Edward Smith), John F. Kennedy (January 19, Richard Reeves), Lyndon B. Johnson (January 23, Robert Dallek), Ronald Reagan (January 27, Lou Cannon), and Richard Nixon.

Legislation and executive orders

Within minutes of taking the Oath of Office on January 20, Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, issued an order suspending last-minute federal regulations pushed through by outgoing President George W. Bush, planning to review everything still pending. Due to the economic crisis, the President enacted a pay freeze for Senior White House Staff making more than $100,000 per year, as well as announcing stricter guidelines regarding lobbyists in an effort to raise the ethical standards of the White House. He asked for a waiver to his own new rules, however, for the appointments of William Lynn to the position of Deputy Defense Secretary, Jocelyn Frye to the position of director of policy and projects in the Office of the First Lady, and Cecilia Muñoz to the position of director of intergovernmental affairs in the executive office of the president, leading to some criticism of hypocrisy and violation of his pledge for governmental openness.

In his first week in office, Obama signed Executive Order 13492 suspending all the ongoing proceedings of Guantanamo military commission and ordering the detention facility to be shut down within the year. He also signed Executive Order 13491 - Ensuring Lawful Interrogations requiring the Army Field Manual to be used as a guide for terror interrogations, banning torture and other coercive techniques, such as waterboarding. Obama also issued an executive order entitled "Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel", setting stricter limitations on incoming executive branch employees and placing tighter restrictions on lobbying in the White House. Obama signed two Presidential Memoranda concerning energy independence, ordering the Department of Transportation to establish higher fuel efficiency standards before 2011 models are released and allowing states to raise their emissions standards above the national standard. He also ended the Mexico City Policy, which banned federal grants to international groups that provide abortion services or counseling.

In his first week he also established a policy of producing a weekly Saturday morning video address available on whitehouse.gov and YouTube, much like those released during his transition period. The first address had been viewed by 600,000 YouTube viewers by the next afternoon.

The first piece of legislation Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 on January 29, which revised the statute of limitations for filing pay discrimination lawsuits. Lilly Ledbetter joined Obama and his wife, Michelle, as he signed the bill, fulfilling his campaign pledge to nullify ''Ledbetter v. Goodyear''. On February 3, he signed the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIP), expanding health care from 7 million children under the plan to 11 million.

| format = Ogg | type = speech }} After much debate, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was passed by both the House and Senate on February 13, 2009. Originally intended to be a bipartisan bill, the passage of the bill was largely along party lines. No Republicans voted for it in the House, and three moderate Republicans voted for it in the Senate (Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania). The bill combined tax breaks with spending on infrastructure projects, extension of welfare benefits, and education. The final cost of the bill was $787 billion, and almost $1.2 trillion with debt service included. Obama signed the Act into law on February 17, 2009, in Denver, Colorado.

On March 9, 2009, Obama lifted restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, and in doing so, called into question some of George W. Bush's signing statements. Obama stated that he too would employ signing statements if he deems upon review that a portion of a bill is unconstitutional, and he has issued several signing statements.

Early in his presidency, Obama signed a law raising the tobacco tax 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes. The tax is to be "used to finance a major expansion of health insurance for children", and "help some [smokers] to quit and persuade young people not to start".

In October 2011, Obama instituted the We Can't Wait program, which involved using executive orders, administrative rulemaking, and recess appointments to institute policies without the support of Congress. The initiative was developed in response to Congress's unwillingness to pass economic legislation proposed by Obama, and conflicts in Congress during the 2011 debt ceiling crisis.

Approval ratings and opinion

2009

After his transition period, Obama entered office with an approval rating of 82%. At the end of his first week, 68% of respondents in a Gallup poll approved of how Obama was handling his job, matching the early approval ratings of Dwight D. Eisenhower and trailing only John F. Kennedy in post-World War II presidents.

Throughout early February polls showed scattered approval ratings: 62% (CBS News), 64% (USA Today/Gallup), 66% (Gallup), and 76% in an outlier poll (CNN/Opinion Research). Gallup reported the congressional address in late February boosted his approval from a term-low of 59% to 67%.

Throughout autumn 2009, Rasmussen estimated Obama's approval as fluctuating between 45% and 52% and his disapproval between 48% and 54%; as of November 11, Pew Research estimated Obama's approval between 51% and 55% and his disapproval between 33% and 37% since July.

Handling of the economy

Rasmussen reported in mid-February 2009, that 55% of voters gave Obama good or excellent marks on his handling of the economy. In early March, a ''The Wall Street Journal'' survey of 49 economists gave Obama an average grade of 59 out of 100, with 42% of the respondents surveyed giving the administration's economic policies a grade below 60 percent. In comparison, only 30% of those same economists considered the response of governments around the world to the global recession to have been adequate. In April, a Gallup poll showed trust in Obama's economic policy with 71% saying they had "a fair amount" or "a great deal" of confidence in Obama's handling of the economy, higher than for Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, or leaders of Congress. Another Gallup poll in June showed 55% of Americans approved Obama's overall handling of the economy, but 48% and 51% disapproved of his handling of the federal budget deficit and controlling federal spending, respectively. A CBS News poll taken August 27–31 showed 53% of those polled approved of his handling of the economy. A Rasmussen poll taken on November 12 found 45% of Americans rating Obama's handling of the economy as poor and 39% rating him as doing a good or excellent job. They found 72% of Democrats rated his handling of the economy as good or excellent, while only 10% of Republicans and 27% of voters not affiliated with either party agreed.

2010

On March 25, 2010, following his signing of landmark health care reform legislation into law, Obama's polling was revealed by Bloomberg to be 50%, with higher marks for relations with other countries (58%) and his running of the war in Afghanistan (54%). "Obama's approval rating is roughly equal to what Bill Clinton had at this point in his presidency, according to data maintained by Gallup (and) higher than the 45 percent Ronald Reagan recorded in April 1982" and more favorable than Democrats or Republicans office in 2010. They found Obama's approval rating was at 85% among Democrats, compared with 46% among independents and 11% among Republicans.

Fox News released the results of two polls on April 8–9, 2010. The first showed a drop in Obama's approval rating to 43%, with 48% disapproving. In that poll, Democrats approved of Obama's performance 80–12%, while independents disapproved 49–38%. The other poll, which concentrated on the economy, showed disapproval of Obama's handling of the economy by a 53–42% margin, with 62% saying they were dissatisfied with the handling of the federal deficit. According to a Gallup Poll released April 10, 2010, President Obama had a 45% approval rating, with 48% disapproving. In a poll from Rasmussen Reports, released April 10, 2010, 47% approved of the President's performance, while 53% disapproved.

2011

Obama's approval rating jumped to a high following the death of Osama Bin Laden on May 2, 2011. A GfK poll conducted May 5, 2011 found his approval rating to be 60%. During the debt ceiling debate in August 2011, Obama's approval rating dropped to the low-40s.

Major legislation

2009

January 29: Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

February 4: Children's Health Insurance Reauthorization Act

February 11: DTV Delay Act

February 17: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

March 30: Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009

April 21: Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act

May 20: Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act

May 20: Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009

May 22: Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act of 2009

June 22: Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act

August 6: Cash For Clunkers Extension Act

October 22: Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act

October 28: Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act

October 28: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010

October 30: Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act

November 6: Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009

2010

January 27: Emergency Aid to American Survivors of Haiti Earthquake Act

March 4: Travel Promotion Act

March 18: Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (HIRE Act)

March 23: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

March 30: Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010

May 5: Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010

May 17: Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act

July 1: Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act

July 21: Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

July 22: Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2010

July 22: Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010

August 10: SPEECH Act of 2010

September 27: Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010

December 9: Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act of 2010

December 13: Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010

December 17: Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010

December 22: Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010

2011

January 2: James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 () January 4: Food Safety and Modernization Act, ,

January 7: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011

August 2: Budget Control Act of 2011

December 31: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

Personnel

Cabinet appointees

Twenty-two members of the Obama administration are either in the United States Cabinet (15) or are in positions considered to be Cabinet-level (7). The members of the Cabinet are the heads of the fifteen major departments (State, Defense, Justice, etc.), and the seven cabinet-level positions are the Vice President, White House Chief of Staff, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, U.S. Trade Representative, Ambassador to the United Nations, and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Since Robert Gates was a member of the previous administration, his letter of resignation (a formality at the end of a President's term) was simply not accepted, and he did not need confirmation. On January 19, 2009, Senate Democratic leaders requested fifteen of the twenty positions to be ratified by unanimous consent, and seven gained unanimous confirmation by voice vote the next day: Ken Salazar, Steven Chu, Arne Duncan, Peter Orszag, Eric Shinseki, Tom Vilsack, and Janet Napolitano. On January 21, Obama presided over the swearing in of the seven unanimous nominees. Later that day, the Senate confirmed Hillary Clinton by a 94–2 vote. On January 22, several more confirmations were approved unanimously: Susan E. Rice, Ray LaHood, Lisa P. Jackson, and Shaun Donovan. On January 26, the Senate confirmed Geithner by a 60–34 margin.

At the conclusion of Obama's first week as President, Hilda Solis, Tom Daschle, Ron Kirk, and Eric Holder had yet to be confirmed, and there had been no second appointment for Secretary of Commerce. Holder was confirmed by a vote of 75–21 on February 2, and on February 3, Obama announced Senator Judd Gregg as his second nomination for Secretary of Commerce. Daschle withdrew later that day amid controversy over his failure to pay income taxes and potential conflicts of interest related to the speaking fees he accepted from health care interests. Solis was later confirmed by a vote of 80-17 on February 24, and Ron Kirk was confirmed on March 18 by a 92-5 vote in the Senate.

Gregg, who was the leading Republican negotiator and author of the TARP program in the Senate, after publication that he had a multi-million dollar investment in the Bank of America, on February 12, withdrew his nomination as Secretary of Commerce, citing "irresolvable conflicts" with President Obama and his staff over how to conduct the 2010 census and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Former Washington governor Gary Locke was nominated on February 26 as Obama's third choice for Commerce Secretary and confirmed on March 24 by voice vote.

On March 2, Obama introduced Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius as his second choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services. He also introduced Nancy-Ann DeParle as head of the new White House Office of Health Reform, which he suggested would work closely with the Department of Health and Human Services. At the end of March, Sebelius was the only remaining Cabinet member yet to be confirmed.

Six high-ranking cabinet nominees in the Obama administration had their confirmations delayed or rejected among reports that they did not pay all of their taxes, including Tom Daschle, Obama's original nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Though Geithner was confirmed, and Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, thought Daschle would have been confirmed, Daschle withdrew his nomination on February 3. Obama had nominated Nancy Killefer for the position of Chief Performance Officer, but Killefer also withdrew on February 3, citing unspecified problems with District of Columbia unemployment tax. A senior administration official said that Killefer's tax issues dealt with household help. Hilda Solis, Obama's nominee for Secretary of Labor, faced delayed confirmation hearings due to tax lien concerns pertaining to her husband's auto repair business, but she was later confirmed on February 24. While pundits puzzled over U.S. Trade Representative-designate Ron Kirk's failure to be confirmed by March 2009, it was reported on March 2 that Kirk owed over $10,000 in back taxes. Kirk agreed to pay them in exchange for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus's aid in speeding up the confirmation process; he was later confirmed on March 18. On March 31, Kathleen Sebelius, Obama's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, revealed in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee that her Certified Public Accountant found errors in her tax returns for years 2005-2007. She, along with her husband, paid more than $7,000 in back taxes, along with $878 in interest.

Notable non-Cabinet positions

Appointees serve at the pleasure of the President and were nominated by Barack Obama except as noted.

Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

*Sheila Bair¹ (2009–2011)

Special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan

*Richard Holbrooke (2009–2010)

*Marc Grossman (2011–present)

Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

* Retired General James L. Jones (2009–2011)

* Thomas E. Donilon (2011–present)

Special envoy to the Middle East

* George J. Mitchell (2009–2011)

* David Hale (2011–present)

Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

* Robert Mueller² (2009–present)

Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

* Leon Panetta (2009–2011)

* Michael Morell (Acting-2011)

* David Petraeus (2011–present)

Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers

* Christina Romer (2009–2010)

* Austan Goolsbee (2010–2011)

* Alan Krueger (2011–present)

Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission

* Mary Schapiro (2009–present)

Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Director of National Economic Council

* Lawrence Summers (2009–2010)

* Gene Sperling (2011–present)

Chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board

* Paul Volcker (2009–2011)

* ''Replaced by Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in 2011''

Chairperson of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness

* Jeffrey R. Immelt (2011–present)

¹Appointed by George W. Bush in 2006 to a five-year term ²Appointed by George W. Bush in 2001 to a ten-year term

Judicial nominees

United States Supreme Court

Obama appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States: Sonia Sotomayor 2009 Elena Kagan 2010

Other courts

Outside of the Supreme Court, by October 2009, Obama had nominated fewer than two dozen judges to fill judicial vacancies, of which there were close to 100. This has prompted some Democrats to criticize the pace of Obama's judicial appointments as too slow. In December 2009, Senator Patrick Leahy criticized Republicans for stalling those judicial nominations that had been made, noting that the Senate confirmed more district and circuit court nominees during the first year of the George W. Bush administration than it had approved by that point during the Barack Obama presidency.

As of July 2010, Obama's nominees to the district and circuit courts had been confirmed at a rate of only 43.5 percent, compared to 87.2 percent during Bill Clinton's administration and 91.3 percent for George W. Bush. The Center for American Progress, which compiled the data, commented:

Judicial confirmations slowed to a trickle on the day President Barack Obama took office. Filibusters, anonymous holds, and other obstructionary tactics have become the rule. Uncontroversial nominees wait months for a floor vote, and even district court nominees—low-ranking judges whose confirmations have never been controversial in the past—are routinely filibustered into oblivion. Nominations grind to a halt in many cases even after the Senate Judiciary Committee has unanimously endorsed a nominee.

Policies

Economy

Upon entering office, Obama planned to center his attention on handling the global financial crisis. Even before his inauguration he lobbied Congress to pass an economic stimulus bill, which became the top priority during his first month in office. As President, Obama made a high profile trip to Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C. to dialog with Congressional Republicans and advocate for the bill. On February 17, 2009, Obama signed into law a $787 billion plan that included spending for health care, infrastructure, education, various tax breaks and incentives, and direct assistance to individuals. The tax provisions of the law reduced taxes for 98 per cent of taxpayers, bringing tax rates to their lowest levels in 60 years.

As part of the 2010 budget proposal, the Obama administration has proposed additional measures to attempt to stabilize the economy, including a $2–3 trillion measure aimed at stabilizing the financial system and freeing up credit. The program includes up to $1 trillion to buy toxic bank assets, an additional $1 trillion to expand a federal consumer loan program, and the $350 billion left in the Troubled Assets Relief Program. The plan also includes $50 billion intended to slow the wave of mortgage foreclosures. The 2011 budget includes a three-year freeze on discretionary spending, proposes several program cancellations, and raises taxes on high income earners to bring down deficits during the economic recovery.

In a July 2009 interview with ABC News, Biden was asked about the sustained increase of the U.S. unemployment rate from May 2007 to October 2009 despite the administration's multi-year economic stimulus package passed five months earlier. He responded "The truth is, we and everyone else, misread the economy. The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there ... the truth is, there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited." The White House indicates that 2 million jobs were created or saved due to the stimulus package in 2009 and self reporting by recipients of the grants, loans, and contracts portion of the package report that the package saved or created 608,317 jobs in the final three months of 2009.

The unemployment rate rose in 2009, reaching a peak in October at 10.1% and averaging 10.0% in the fourth quarter. Following a decrease to 9.7% in the first quarter of 2010, the unemployment rate fell to 9.6% in the second quarter, where it remained for the rest of the year. Between February and December 2010, employment rose by 0.8%, which was less than the average of 1.9% experienced during comparable periods in the past four employment recoveries. GDP growth returned in the third quarter of 2009, expanding at a 1.6% pace, followed by a 5.0% increase in the fourth quarter. Growth continued in 2010, posting an increase of 3.7% in the first quarter, with lesser gains throughout the rest of the year. Overall, the economy expanded at a rate of 2.9% in 2010.

During November–December 2010, Obama and a lame duck session of the 111th Congress focused on a dispute about the temporary Bush tax cuts, which were due to expire at the end of the year. Obama wanted to extend the tax cuts for taxpayers making less than $250,000 a year. Congressional Republicans agreed but also wanted to extend the tax cuts for those making over that amount, and refused to support any bill that did not do so. All the Republicans in the Senate also joined in saying that, until the tax dispute was resolved, they would filibuster to prevent consideration of any other legislation, except for bills to fund the U.S. government. On 7 December, Obama strongly defended a compromise agreement he had reached with the Republican congressional leadership that included a two-year extension of all the tax cuts, a 13-month extension of unemployment insurance, a one-year reduction in the FICA payroll tax, and other measures. On December 10, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) led a filibuster against the compromise tax proposal, which lasted over eight hours. Obama persuaded many wary Democrats to support the bill, but not all; of the 148 votes against the bill in the House, 112 were cast by Democrats and only 36 by Republicans. The $858 billion Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, which ''The Washington Post'' called "the most significant tax bill in nearly a decade", passed with bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress and was signed into law by Obama on December 17, 2010.

Ethics

Lobbying reform

Early in his presidential campaign, Obama stated that "they [lobbyists] won't find a job in my White House", but softened his stance later in the campaign. On January 21, 2009, Obama issued an executive order for all future appointees to his administration, which stated, no appointee who was a registered lobbyist within the two years before his appointment could participate on matters in which he lobbied for a period of two years after the date of appointment. Three formal waivers were initially issued in early 2009, out of 800 executive appointments: to William J. Lynn III, a lobbyist for Raytheon, to hold the position of Deputy Secretary of Defense; to Jocelyn Frye, former general counsel at the National Partnership for Women and Families, to serve as Director of Policy and Projects in the Office of the First Lady; and to Cecilia Muñoz, former senior vice president for the National Council of La Raza, to serve as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs in the Executive Office of the President. As of March 21, 2009, at least thirty officials appointed by Obama had been lobbyists in the past five years. Ten additional waivers were announced in September 2009.

Not all recent former lobbyists require waivers; those without waivers write letters of recusal stating issues from which they must refrain because of their previous jobs. ''USA Today'' reported that 21 members of the Obama administration have at some time been registered as federal lobbyists, although most have not within the previous two years. Lobbyists in the administration include William Corr, an anti-tobacco lobbyist, as Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services and Tom Vilsack, who lobbied in 2007, for a national teachers union, as Secretary of Agriculture. Also, the Secretary of Labor nominee, Hilda Solis, formerly served as a board member of American Rights at Work, which lobbied Congress on two bills Solis co-sponsored, and Mark Patterson, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's chief of staff, is a former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have criticized the administration, claiming that Obama is retreating from his own ethics rules barring lobbyists from working on the issues about which they lobbied during the previous two years by issuing waivers. According to Melanie Sloan, the group's executive director, "It makes it appear that they are saying one thing and doing another."

Transparency

The Obama administration has said that all executive orders, non-emergency legislation, and proclamations will be posted to the official White House website, whitehouse.gov, allowing the public to review and comment for five days before the President signs the legislation. The pledge was twice broken during Obama's first month in office when he signed SCHIP legislation and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act with less than the full five days of "sunlight before signing". The administration has said that they are still "working through implementation procedures and some initial issues with the congressional calendar".

During his first week in office, Obama announced plans to post a video address each week on the site, and on YouTube, informing the public of government actions each week. During his speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Obama stated, "I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less - because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy."

On January 21, 2009, by executive order, Obama revoked Executive Order 13233, which had limited access to the records of former United States Presidents. Obama issued instructions to all agencies and departments in his administration to "adopt a presumption in favor" of Freedom of Information Act requests. In April 2009, the United States Department of Justice released four legal memos from the Bush administration to comply voluntarily with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The memos were written by John Yoo and signed by Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury, then Principal Assistant Attorneys General to the Department of Justice, and addressed to John A. Rizzo, general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency. The memos describe in detail controversial interrogation methods the CIA used on prisoners suspected of terrorism. Obama became personally involved in the decision to release the memos, which was opposed by former CIA directors Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, George Tenet and John Deutch. Former Vice President Dick Cheney criticized Obama for not releasing more memos; Cheney claimed that unreleased memos detail successes of CIA interrogations.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act requires all recipients of the funds provided by the act to publish a plan for using the funds, along with purpose, cost, rationale, net job creation, and contact information about the plan to a website Recovery.gov so that the public can review and comment. Inspectors General from each department or executive agency will then review, as appropriate, any concerns raised by the public. Any findings of an Inspector General must be relayed immediately to the head of each department and published on Recovery.gov.

On June 16, 2009, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration in order to get information about the visits of coal company executives. Anne Weismann, the chief counsel for CREW, stated "The Obama administration has now taken exactly the same position as the Bush administration... I don't see how you can keep people from knowing who visits the White House and adhere to a policy of openness and transparency." On June 16, MSNBC reported that its more comprehensive request for visitor logs since Obama's January 20 inauguration had been denied. The administration announced that White House visitor logs will be made available to the public on an ongoing basis, with certain limitations, for visits occurring after September 15, 2009. Beginning on January 29, 2010, the White House did begin to release the names of its visitor records. Since that time, names of visitors (which includes not only tourists, but also names of union leaders, Wall Street executives, lobbyists, party chairs, philanthropists and celebrities), have been released. The names are released in huge batches up to 75,000 names at a time. Names are released 90–120 days after having visited the White House. The complete list of names is available online by accessing the official White House website.

Obama stated during the 2008 Presidential campaign that he would have negotiations for health care reform televised on C-SPAN, citing transparency as being the leverage needed to ensure that people stay involved in the process taking place in Washington. This did not fully happen and Politifact gives President Obama a "Promise Broken" rating on this issue. After White House press secretary Robert Gibbs initially avoided addressing the issue, President Obama himself acknowledged that he met with Democratic leaders behind closed doors to discuss how best to garner enough votes in order to merge the two (House and Senate) passed versions of the health care bill. Doing this violated the letter of the pledge, although Obama maintains that negotiations in several congressional committees were open, televised hearings. Obama also cited an independent ethics watchdog group describe his administration as the most transparent in recent history.

The Obama administration has been characterized as much more aggressive than the Bush and other previous administrations in their response to whistleblowing and leaks to the press. Three people have been prosecuted under the rarely used Espionage Act of 1917. They include Thomas Andrews Drake, a former National Security Agency (NSA) employee who was critical of the NSA's Trailblazer Project, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department contractor who allegedly had a conversation about North Korea with James Rosen of Fox News, and Jeffrey Sterling, who allegedly was a source for James Risen's book State of War. Risen has also been subpoenaed to reveal his sources, another rare action by the government.

Foreign policy

In his inaugural address, Obama suggested that he plans to begin the process of withdrawing from Iraq and continuing to focus on the war in Afghanistan. He also mentioned lessening the nuclear threat through "working tirelessly with old friends and former foes". He spoke about America's determination to combat terrorism, proclaiming America's spirit is "stronger and cannot be broken — you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you." To the Muslim world, Obama extended an invite to "a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect". He also said the USA would "extend a hand" to those "who cling to power through corruption and deceit" if they "are willing to unclench" their fists. Shortly after his inauguration President Obama first called President Abbas of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). Calls were also made to President Mubarak of Egypt, Prime Minister Olmert of Israel and King Abdullah of Jordan. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named George Mitchell as Special Envoy for Middle East peace and Richard Holbrooke as special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan on January 23, 2009. At the same time, Obama called on Israel to open the borders of Gaza, detailing early plans on his administration's peace plans for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. On February 18, 2009, Obama announced that the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan would be bolstered by 17,000 new troops by summer. The announcement followed the recommendation of several experts including Defense Secretary Robert Gates that additional troops be deployed to the war-torn nation.

Obama declared his plan for ending the Iraq War on February 27, 2009, in a speech at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, before an audience of Marines stationed there. According to the president, combat troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by August 2010, leaving a contingent of up to 50,000 servicemen and servicewomen to continue training, advisory, and counterterrorism operations until as late as the end of 2011.

Other characteristics of the Obama administration on foreign policy include a tough stance on tax havens, continuing military operation in Pakistan, and avowed focus on diplomacy to prevent nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea.

On April 1, 2009, Obama and China's President, Hu Jintao, announced the establishment of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue and agreed to work together to build a positive, cooperative, and comprehensive U.S.-China relationship for the 21st century.

In that same month, Obama requested that Congress approve $83.4 billion of supplemental military funding, mostly for the war in Iraq and to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. The request also includes $2.2 billion to increase the size of the US military, $350 million to upgrade security along the US-Mexico border, and $400 million in counterinsurgency aid for Pakistan.

In May 2009, it was reported that Obama plans to expand the military by 20,000 employees.

On June 4, 2009, Obama delivered a speech at Cairo University in Egypt. The wide ranging speech called for a "new beginning" in relations between the Islamic world and the United States. The speech received both praise and criticism from leaders in the region. In March 2010, Secretary of State Clinton criticized the Israeli government for approving expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem.

On April 8, 2010, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the latest Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), a "major" nuclear arms control agreement that reduces the nuclear weapons stockpiles of both countries.

In March 2011, international reaction to Muammar Gaddafi's military crackdown on rebel forces and civilians in Libya culminated in a United Nations resolution to enforce a no fly zone in Libya. Obama authorized U.S. forces to participate in international air attacks on Libyan air defenses using Tomahawk cruise missiles to establish the protective zone.

Guantánamo Bay detention camp

On his first day in office, Obama requested a 120-day suspension of all trials for alleged terrorists held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, so the new administration could "review the military commissions process, generally, and the cases pending before military commissions , specifically". Another order established a task force to lead a review of detention policies, procedures and individual cases. Obama addressed the State Department that "the United States will not torture" and drafted an executive order to close Guantánamo within a year. On January 22, 2009, Obama signed an executive order ensuring safe, lawful, and humane treatment of individuals detained in armed conflicts. This order restricts interrogators to methods listed and authorized by an Army Field Manual. A detainee released since Obama took office claimed in an interview with Agence France-Presse that conditions at Guantánamo had worsened, stating guards wanted to "take their last revenge" before the facility is closed. On March 13, 2009, the administration announced that it would no longer refer to prisoners at Guantánamo Bay as enemy combatants, but it also asserted that the president has the authority to detain terrorism suspects there without criminal charges.

The case review of detainee files by administration officials and prosecutors was made more difficult than expected as the Bush administration had failed to establish a coherent repository of the evidence and intelligence on each prisoner. By September 2009, prosecutors recommended to the Justice Department which detainees are eligible for trial, and the Justice Department and the Pentagon worked together to determine which of several now-scheduled trials will go forward in military tribunals and which in civilian courts. While 216 international terrorists are already held in maximum security prisons in the U.S., Congress was denying the administration funds to shut down the camp and adapt existing facilities elsewhere, arguing that the decision was "too dangerous to rush". In November, Obama stated that the U.S. would miss the January 2010 date for closing the Guantánamo Bay prison as he had ordered, acknowledging that he "knew this was going to be hard". Obama did not set a specific new deadline for closing the camp, citing that the delay was due to politics and lack of congressional cooperation. The state of Illinois has offered to sell to the federal government the Thomson Correctional Center, a new but largely unused prison, for the purpose of housing detainees. Federal officials testified at a December 23 hearing that if the state commission approves the sale for that purpose, it could take more than six months to ready the facility.

Killing of Osama bin Laden

Starting with information received in July 2010, intelligence developed by the CIA over the next several months determined what they believed to be the location of Osama bin Laden in a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a suburban area 35 miles from Islamabad. CIA head Leon Panetta reported this intelligence to Obama in March 2011. Meeting with his national security advisers over the course of the next six weeks, Obama rejected a plan to bomb the compound, and authorized a "surgical raid" to be conducted by United States Navy SEALs. The operation took place on May 1, 2011, resulting in the death of bin Laden and the seizure of papers and computer drives and disks from the compound. Bin Laden's body was identified through DNA testing, and buried at sea several hours later. Within minutes of Obama's announcement from Washington, DC, late in the evening on May 1, there were spontaneous celebrations around the country as crowds gathered outside the White House, and at New York City's Ground Zero and Times Square. Reaction to the announcement was positive across party lines, including from predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and from many countries around the world.

Overseas Contingency Operation

Obama discontinued use of the term "War on Terror" and instead uses the term "Overseas Contingency Operation". However, Obama has stated that the U.S. is at war with Al-Qaeda, saying "Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred."

In April 2010, the Obama administration took the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them.

Gun control

During the presidential campaign, Obama announced that he favors measures that respect Second Amendment rights, while at the same time keeping guns away from children and criminals. On February 25, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama administration would seek a new assault weapons ban across the United States, saying that it would have a positive impact on the drug-related violence in Mexico. After the statement drew criticism from the NRA and some House Democrats, the Administration reportedly ordered the Justice Department to end public discussion of the issue. Obama has signed into law two bills containing amendments reducing restrictions on gun owners, one which permits guns to be transported in checked baggage on Amtrak trains and another which allows carrying loaded firearms in national parks located in states allowing concealed carry.

Science and technology

Cybersecurity

Obama initiated a 60-day review of cybersecurity by Melissa Hathaway, a consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton, appointed Acting Senior Director for Cyberspace.

''The New York Times'' reported in 2009, that the NSA is intercepting communications of American citizens including a Congressman, although the Justice Department believed that the NSA had corrected its errors. United States Attorney General Eric Holder resumed the wiretapping according to his understanding of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008 that Congress passed in July 2008, but without explaining what had occurred.

Environment

On January 27, 2009, Obama issued two presidential memoranda concerning energy policy. One directed the Department of Transportation to raise fuel efficiency standards incrementally to by 2020, and the other directed the Environmental Protection Agency to allow individual states to set stricter tailpipe emissions regulations than the federal standard.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides $54 billion in funds to double domestic renewable energy production, renovate federal buildings making them more energy-efficient, improve the nation's electricity grid, repair public housing, and weatherize modest-income homes.

On February 10, 2009, Obama overturned a Bush administration policy that had opened up a five-year period of offshore drilling for oil and gas near both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has been quoted as saying, "To establish an orderly process that allows us to make wise decisions based on sound information, we need to set aside" the plan "and create our own timeline".

On May 19, 2009, Obama announced a plan to increase the CAFE national standards for gasoline mileage, by creating a single new national standard that will create a car and light truck fleet in the United States that is almost 40 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by 2016, than it is today, with an average of 35.5 miles per gallon. Environmental advocates and industry officials welcomed the new program, but for different reasons. Environmentalists called it a long-overdue tightening of emissions and fuel economy standards after decades of government delay and industry opposition. Auto industry officials said it would provide the single national efficiency standard they have long desired, a reasonable timetable to meet it and the certainty they need to proceed with product development plans.

On March 30, 2010, Obama partially reinstated Bush administration proposals to open certain offshore areas along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling. The proposals had earlier been set aside by President Obama after they were challenged in court on environmental grounds.

On May 27, 2010, Obama extended a moratorium on offshore drilling permits after the April 20, 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill which is considered to be the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Although BP took responsibility for the disaster and its ongoing after effects, Obama began a federal investigation along with forming a bipartisan commission to review the incident and methods to avoid it in the future. Obama visited the Gulf Coast on May 2 and May 28 and expressed his frustration on the June 8 ''NBC Today Show'', by saying "I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick." Obama's response to the disaster has drawn confusion and criticism within segments of the media and public.

NASA

Obama set up the Augustine panel to review the Constellation program in 2009, and announced in February 2010, that he was cutting the program from the 2011 United States federal budget, describing it as "over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation." After the decision drew criticism in the United States, a new "Flexible path to Mars" plan was unveiled at a space conference in April 2010. It included new technology programs, increased R&D; spending, a focus on the International Space Station and contracting out flying crew to space to commercial providers. The new plan also increased NASA's 2011 budget to $19 billion from $18.3 billion in 2010.

In July 2009, Obama appointed Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, to be administrator of NASA.

Stem cell research

On March 9, 2009, Obama repealed a Bush-era policy that prevented federal tax dollars from being used to fund research on new lines of embryonic stem cells. Such research has been a matter of debate between those who emphasize the therapeutic potential of such research and those who suggest that elements of this research breach ethical limitations. Obama stated that "In recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values...In this case, I believe the two are not inconsistent. As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering. I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research — and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly."

Social policy

On January 23, 2009, Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy, a measure from the Reagan and Bush eras that required any non-governmental organization receiving U.S. Government funding to refrain from performing or promoting abortion services in other countries.

On June 17, 2009, Obama authorized the extension of some benefits (but not health insurance or pension benefits) to same-sex partners of federal employees. Obama has chosen to leave larger changes, such as the repeal of Don't ask, don't tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, to Congress.

On October 19, 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a directive to federal prosecutors in states with medical marijuana laws not to investigate or prosecute cases of marijuana use or production done in compliance with those laws.

On December 16, 2009, President Obama signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010, which repealed a 21-year-old ban on federal funding of needle exchange programs.

On December 22, 2010, Obama signed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010, a bill that provides for repeal of the Don't ask, don't tell policy of 1993, that has prevented gay and lesbian people from serving openly in the United States Armed Forces. Repealing "Don't ask, don't tell" had been a key campaign promise that Obama had made during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Health care reform

Once the stimulus bill was enacted, health care reform became Obama's top domestic priority. On July 14, 2009, House Democratic leaders introduced a 1,000 page plan for overhauling the US health care system, which Obama wanted Congress to approve by the end of the year.

The U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the ten-year cost to the federal government of the major insurance-related provisions of the bill at approximately $1.0 trillion. In mid-July 2009, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the CBO, testified that the proposals under consideration would significantly increase federal spending and did not include the "fundamental changes" needed to control the rapid growth in health care spending. However after reviewing the final version of the bill introduced after 14 months of debate the CBO estimated that it would reduce federal budget deficits by $143 billion over 10 years and by more than a trillion in the next decade.

After much public debate during the Congressional summer recess of 2009, Obama delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress on September 9 where he addressed concerns over his administration's proposals. In March 2010, Obama gave several speeches across the country to argue for the passage of health care reform. On March 21, 2010, after Obama announced an executive order reinforcing the current law against spending federal funds for elective abortion services, the House, by a vote of 219 to 212, passed the version of the bill previously passed on December 24, 2009, by a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate. The bill, which includes over 200 Republican amendments, was passed without a single Republican vote. On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the bill into law. Immediately following the bill's passage, the House voted in favor of a reconciliation measure to make significant changes and corrections to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was passed by both houses with two minor alterations on March 25, 2010, and signed into law on March 30, 2010.

Education reform

On March 30, 2010, Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, which ended the role of private banks in lending out federally-insured student loans. By directly lending to students, the government is projected to save taxpayers $68 billion dollars over the next several years. Federally-insured student loans will instead be distributed by the Department of Education. The law also increased the amount of Pell Grant awards given each year, doubling its current funding. Starting in 2014, the law permits borrowers to cap the amount they spend on student loans each year to ten percent of their discretionary income and have their balance forgiven if they have faithfully paid the balance of their loan over 20 years. Additionally, the law seeks to make it easier for parents to qualify for Grad PLUS loans, and spends billions on poor and minority schools and $2 billion for community colleges.

Gates arrest controversy

On July 16, 2009, prominent African American Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was arrested at his Cambridge, Massachusetts home by a local white police officer, Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley, for disorderly conduct. Gates, who was locked out of his house, had attempted to break into his own property, thus causing the initial alarm from a neighbor who called 9-1-1. The incident sparked national controversy over whether Gates's civil rights had been violated by Crowley. On July 21, the Cambridge Police Department dropped charges against Gates. On July 22, President Barack Obama, commented on the incident over national and international television, criticized the arrest, and stated the police acted "stupidly" in handling the incident. National law enforcement organizations and members objected to Obama's comments and criticized his handling of the issue. In the aftermath, Obama stated that he regretted his comments exacerbating the situation, and hoped that the situation could become a "teachable moment". To reduce tensions, on July 24, Obama invited both parties to the White House to discuss the issue over beers, and on July 30, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden joined Crowley and Gates in a private, cordial meeting in a courtyard near the White House Rose Garden; this became known colloquially as the "Beer Summit".

Wall Street reform

On July 21, 2010, Obama signed Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, considered to be the largest financial system overhaul since the New Deal. The law recognizes complex financial derivatives and makes rules to protect consumers from unfair practices in loans and credit cards by establishing a new consumer protection agency. At the signing ceremony in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington D.C. Obama proclaimed, "There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period." Obama also mentioned that "These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history." At the ceremony were Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the two committee chairmen who sponsored the bill.

2010 midterm elections

Due in large part to voter frustration over high unemployment and a stalled economy, Republicans won control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections. On reflection after the election, Obama blamed himself, in part, for the many Democrats who went down to defeat knowing that they had risked their careers to support his agenda of economic stimulus legislation and a landmark health care bill. Democrats narrowly retained the Senate majority and will continue to control it through the 112th Congress.

Obama called the elections "humbling" and a "shellacking". He said that the results came because not enough Americans had felt the effects of the economic recovery.

2012 re-election campaign

On April 4, 2011, President Obama announced that he would seek re-election in the 2012 presidential election. The campaign will be based in Chicago and is being run by many former members of the White House staff and members of the successful 2008 campaign.

References

External links

"Obama's People" (photography: Nadav Kander)

The Official White House YouTube page

"President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address". The White House.

"Wrapping Up Open for Questions". The White House.

"President Obama's State of the Union Address" C-SPAN.

Obama, Barack

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Coordinates	°′″N°′″N
name	Police officer
official names
activity sector	Law enforcement
competencies	Physical fitness, sense of justice
formation	Secondary or tertiary education
employment field	Public areas
related occupation	gendarmerie, military police, security guard, bodyguard
average salary	$55,000–$100,000 }}

A police officer (also known as a policeman or policewoman, and constable in some forces, particularly in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth nations) is a warranted employee of a police force. In the United States "officer" is the formal name of the lowest police rank; in many other countries "officer" is a generic term not specifying a particular rank, and the lowest rank is often "constable". Police officers are generally charged with the apprehension of criminals and the prevention and detection of crime, and the maintenance of public order. Police officers may be sworn to an oath, and have the power to arrest people and detain them for a limited time, along with other duties and powers.

Some police officers may also be trained in special duties, such as counter-terrorism, surveillance, child protection, VIP protection, and investigation techniques into major crime, including fraud, rape, murder and drug trafficking.

Duties and functions

Responsibilities of a police officer are varied, and may differ greatly from within one political context to another. Typical duties relate to keeping the peace, law enforcement, protection of persons and property, and the investigation of crimes. Officers are expected to respond to a variety of situations that may arise while they are on duty. Rules and guidelines dictate how an officer should behave within the community, and in many contexts restrictions are placed on what the uniformed officer wears. In some countries, rules and procedures dictate that a police officer is obliged to intervene in a criminal incident, even if they are off-duty. Police officers in nearly all countries retain their lawful powers, while off duty.

In the community

In the majority of Western legal systems, the major role of the police is to maintain order, keeping the peace through surveillance of the public, and the subsequent reporting and apprehension of suspected violators of the law. They also function to discourage crimes through high-visibility policing, and most police forces have an investigative capability. Police have the legal authority to arrest, usually granted by magistrates. Police officers also respond to emergency calls, along with routine community policing.

Police are often used as an emergency service and may provide a public safety function at large gatherings, as well as in emergencies, disasters, search and rescue situations, and Road Traffic Collisions. To provide a prompt response in emergencies, the police often coordinate their operations with fire and emergency medical services. In some countries, individuals serve jointly as police officers as well as firefighters (creating the role of Fire Police) or paramedics. In many countries, there is a common emergency service number that allows the police, firefighters, or medical services to be summoned to an emergency. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom have outlined command procedures, for the use in major emergencies or disorder. The Gold Silver Bronze command structure is a system set up to improve communications between ground based officers and the control room, typically, Bronze Commander would be a senior officer on the ground, coordinating the efforts in the center of the emergency, Silver Commanders would be positioned in an 'Incident Control Room' erected to improve better communications at the scene, and a Gold Commander who would be in the Control Room.

Police are also responsible for reprimanding minor offenders by issuing citations which typically may result in the imposition of fines, particularly for violations of traffic law. Traffic enforcement is often and effectively accomplished by police officers on motorcycles—called ''motor officers,'' these officers refer to the motorcycles they ride on duty as simply ''motors.'' Police are also trained to assist persons in distress, such as motorists whose car has broken down and people experiencing a medical emergency. Police are typically trained in basic ffirst aid such as CPR.

In addition, some park rangers are commissioned as law enforcement officers and carry out a law-enforcement role within national parks and other back-country wilderness and recreational areas, whereas Military police perform law enforcement functions within the military.

Entry and promotion qualifications

In most countries, candidates for the police force must have completed some formal education. Increasing numbers of people are joining the police force who possess tertiary education and in response to this many police forces have developed a "fast-track" scheme whereby those with university degrees spend two to three years as a Constable before receiving promotion to higher ranks, such as Sergeants or Inspectors. (Officers who work within investigative divisions or plainclothes are not necessarily of a higher rank but merely have different duties.) Police officers are also recruited from those with experience in the military or security services. In the United States state laws may codify state-wide qualification standards regarding age, education, criminal record, and training but in other places requirements are set by local police agencies. Each local Police agency has different requirements.

Promotion is not automatic and usually requires the candidate to pass some kind of examination, interview board or other selection procedure. Although promotion normally includes an increase in salary, it also brings with it an increase in responsibility and for most, an increase in administrative paperwork. There is no stigma attached to this, as experienced line patrol officers are highly regarded.

Dependent upon each agency, but generally after completing two years of service, officers may also apply for specialist positions, such as detective, police dog handler, mounted police officer, motorcycle officer, water police officer, or firearms officer (in countries where police are not routinely armed).

In some countries such as in Singapore, police ranks may also be supplemented through conscription, similar to national service in the military. Qualifications may thus be relaxed or enhanced depending on the target mix of conscripts. In Singapore, for example, conscripts face tougher physical requirements in areas such as eyesight, but are less stringent with minimum academic qualification requirements. Some police officers join as volunteers, who again may do so via differing qualification requirements.

Police pay

In some societies, police officers are paid relatively well compared to other occupations; their pay depends on what rank they are with in their police force and how many years service they have.

Occupational hazards

Line of duty deaths

Line of duty deaths are deaths which occur while an officer is conducting his or her appointed duties. Despite the increased risk of being a victim of a homicide, automobile accidents are the most common cause of officer deaths. Officers are more likely to be involved in traffic accidents because of their large amount of time spent conducting vehicle patrols, or directing traffic, as well as their work outside their vehicles alongside or on the roadway, or in dangerous pursuits. Officers killed by suspects make up a smaller proportion of deaths. In the U.S. in 2005, 156 line of duty deaths were recorded of which 44% were from assaults on officers, 35% vehicle related (only 3% during vehicular pursuits) and the rest from other causes: heart attacks during arrests/foot pursuits, diseases contracted from suspects' body fluids or, more rarely, emergency blood transfusions, accidental gun discharges, falls, and drownings.

Police officers who die in the line of duty, especially those who die from the actions of suspects, are often given elaborate funerals, attended by large numbers of fellow officers. Their families may also be entitled to special pensions. Fallen officers are often remembered in public memorials, such as the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in the U.S., the National Police Memorial in the U.K. and the Scottish Police Memorial, at the Scottish Police College.

In the United Kingdom, in the 10 years from April 2000 there were 143 line of duty deaths: 54 in road accidents travelling to or from duty, 46 in road accidents on duty, 23 from natural causes on duty, 15 from criminal acts, and 5 in other accidents. (In the United Kingdom, police do not normally carry firearms.)

The Singapore Police Force registered just over 100 deaths in a century up to the year 2000. There have been 28 New Zealand police officers killed by criminal act since 1890. Despite perceived dangers, policing has never been listed among the top ten most dangerous jobs in the U.S. In terms of deaths per capita, driver-sales work such as food delivery is a more dangerous profession than being a police officer, although some people say police work is more dangerous in some larger U.S. cities than in foreign military deployment ( e.g. during the Vietnam War, "early out" programs in certain cities were offered to recruits as alternatives to Vietnam deployment, but many soldiers chose Vietnam, figuring their chances of survival would be better).

Work stress

Indicators

The actual presence of stress in police work is well documented and evidenced by certain statistics. Researchers typically use suicide, divorce and alcoholism rates as three key indexes of stress in a group of people. These factors paint a compelling picture of police officers demonstrating signs of significant stress, for example:

A study in the United States, by National Surveillance of Police Suicide Study (NSOPS), showed 141 suicides in 2008 and 143 in 2009. This yields a suicide rate of 17/100,000, a figure that holds up under scrutiny and is consistent with CDC/NOMS data. The overall suicide rate in the United States was 11.3 suicide deaths per 100,000 people. There is some speculation or controversy that this official rate may understate the actual rate as it is often other police officers that report facts that lead to a cause of death determination, and death benefits, institutional image, and other factors may be incentives to misreport incident facts. It is speculated that some suicides are reported by fellow officers as accidents or as deaths in the line of duty perpetrated by unknown assailants. Also, many jurisdictions simply don't keep suicide statistics. Even though the information is incomplete, the raw numbers are highly compelling that police officers are much more likely to commit suicide than other occupations. However there is still controversy in the interpretation of these statistics. When comparisons are made within age, gender, and racial cohorts, the differences are much less dramatic. Although suicides may be notably more prevalent among police, it is not clear whether police suicides are the result of work stress or the consequence of other variables, such as the influence of a subculture of violence Police officers are much more likely to experience interpersonal relationship problems. Relationship problems are most dramatically demonstrated by the divorce rate among police officers, which is usually reported as being the second highest of all occupations. However in a 2009 study, the divorce rates of law enforcement personnel were compared with the rates for other occupations, where data was analyzed from the 2000 U.S. Census. The results of the analysis indicate that the divorce rate for law enforcement personnel is lower than that of the general population, even after controlling for demographic and other job-related variables. The propensity to domestic violence is also thought to be higher for police officers than the general population, though the statistics are very fuzzy and controversial. Police officers also seem to have relationship problems at work, typically with superiors or with political oversight, though the evidence is largely anecdotal and controversial.

Alcoholism is considered another aberrant statistic for police officers. Although the statistics are fuzzy, clinically treated alcohol addiction rates are usually calculated to be about twice as high for police officers than for the general population in the United States. In contrast, statistics documenting alcohol abuse are less precise. Rates for arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol, or DUI or DWI, are somewhat higher for police officers than for other drivers, but the statistics are not widely trusted outside of the insurance industry since it is other police officers that make DUI arrests. Some departments and even some individual officers tend to hold police officers to a higher behavioral and ethical standard while others will recognize a 'blue line' behind which those within the 'brotherhood' are not held to the same standards as the rest of society. Despite the controversies in the interpretation of the statistics, it is generally considered evident that police officers are more susceptible to alcohol abuse than other occupations. The same conclusions are usually made regarding the police abuse of other substances, though the statistics are even less accurate, and even though the higher rates of substance abuse may be due in part to the more ready access to drugs and the more permissive atmosphere 'behind the blue line' rather than to occupational stresses.

Hans Selye, the foremost researcher in stress in the world, said that police work is "the most stressful occupation in America even surpassing the formidable stresses of air traffic control."

Other researchers, though, claim that police officers are more psychologically healthy than the general population. Police officers are increasingly more educated, more likely to engage in a regular program of exercise and to consume less alcohol and tobacco, and increasingly family-oriented. Healthy behavior patterns typically observed at entry training usually continue throughout the career of an officer. Even though the presence of occupation related stress seems to be well documented, it is highly controversial. Many within the law enforcement industry claim the propagation of incorrect suicide, divorce, and substance abuse statistics comes from people or organizations with political or social agendas, and that the presence of these beliefs within the industry makes it hard for health workers to help police officers in need of treatment to deal with the fear of negative consequences from police work which is necessary to enable police officers to develop a healthy expectancy of success in treatment.

Sources

Even though the presence of occupational stresses appear to be well documented, though not without controversy, the causes of workplace stress are comparatively unclear or even a matter of conjecture.

Although individual policemen and institutional public relations typically cite the risks of being killed in the line of duty as the predominant source of stress for individual policemen, there is significant controversy regarding the causes of personal workplace stress due to the fact that the actual risk of being killed is so small relative to other occupations.

It is charged that the myth of the high risks of occupational mortality connected with police work is often propagated by the law enforcement community as part of its institutional advancement and a central element in its public relations. Actual homicides of police are comparatively rare, but the reports of such incidents are typically reported in the press along with quotes by police officials or police officer family members stressing the notion that police officers 'put their lives on the line for the public' or 'risk their lives everyday', making it look like individual policemen routinely place themselves in mortal danger for low pay and little recognition, and that the view of police work as 'combat' is the source of police occupational stress indications.

Another explanation often advanced is the idea that police officers will undergo some traumatic experience in their police work that they never recover from, leading to suicide, divorce, etc. However, since the effects of such traumatic stresses is readily recognized, there are usually proactive programs in place to help individual police officers deal with the psychological effects of a traumatic event. Unfortunately, there is some evidence that such programs are actually ineffective, especially group therapies, may re-traumatize the participant, weaken coping mechanisms, and contribute to the development of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Observations where police officers and other emergency workers, such as firemen, experience the same traumatic event, it is more likely that the police officer will have difficulty dealing with the long term emotional effects of the traumatic event. On this observation, some of the academic literature suggests that along these lines the causes of occupational stress is more complex for police officers. Stress in police work is often present in other occupations, but not in an ongoing capacity. One line of thinking is that the individual stresses of police work produce a condition of chronic stress. Police officers encounter stressors in call after call which sap their emotional strength. Debilitation from this daily stress accumulates making officers more vulnerable to traumatic incidents and normal pressures of life. The weakening process is often too slow to see; neither a person nor his friends are aware of the damage being done. The effects of chronic stresses is two-fold:

First, prolonged stress causes people to regress. Their psychological growth reverses, and they become more immature. They rapidly become more childish and primitive, much like a person being sick for several days becoming more irritable and childish in its demands on other people.

Second, chronic stress numbs people's sensitivity. They can't stand to continually see human misery. They must stop feeling or they won't survive. The mind has this defense mechanism so people can continue working in horrible situations. If they kept their normal sensitivity, they would fall apart. As they become insensitive to their own suffering, they become insensitive to the suffering of others. When treated with indignity, they lose not only a sense of their own dignity but also the dignity of others. The pain of others stops bothering them, and they are no longer bothered when they hurt others.

The daily work of a police officer involves certain paradoxes and conflicts which may be difficult to deal with, the predominant examples are

Any interaction with a member of the public, whether socially or officially, such as in a traffic stop, involves a non-trivial risk of verbal abuse or physical harm. Treating a person with common respect or normal social graces requires the officer to be off guard and unprepared for an attack. Being on guard for an attack and treating every interpersonal situation with safety procedures and affirmative commands makes the police officer appear cynical, brutal, and detached, and limits his actual effectiveness with the public. Considering someone a friend or an enemy produces opposite mental states, an unnatural no-win situation engendering chronic stress.

A police department is both a professional and military organization, and these two aspects oppose each other. As a professional, he is considered to be an expert in his field and is expected to use his expertise for the good of his public. He has much discretion in how he serves the people who call upon him. However, the dangers and complexities of the work require a military structure of the organization and a military leaning in the training. Although some are actually educated, all police officers are well trained. Policies, regulations, and procedures cover every facet of police work. Everything is expected to be done by the book with substantial repercussions, including civil and criminal liability, for varying from the expectations of operating procedures. Often the facts of a situation require a course of action that does not follow procedures. If he follows procedures exactly, he knows he won't fully help the public, and the public will think he is shirking his responsibility. If the officer follows his own judgment, he is taking a risk. The community and department expect officers to use judgment, but when they do, there is a danger they will be disciplined; another unnatural no-win situation engendering chronic stress.

Police officers tend to become socially isolated. The reasons given for this isolation are varied and mostly anecdotal. One theory is that police work is not balanced. Most occupations involve a combination of good and bad results. In police work, almost everything is bad, and everybody you deal with is perceived either inherently bad or at least foolish. Another is that police officers develop a 'street wisdom' and by fiat possess a degree of authority that tends to make them perceive themselves as being morally superior to the rest of society. Whatever the reason, the public that the police deal with clearly perceive it and tend to reinforce the divide. Classically when a group of people are isolated, they become disoriented and confused. Their behavior changes drastically. Ironically an isolated class are usually the ones who are losing real world wisdom and tend to judge the world incorrectly from a very limited perspective, leading to interpersonal mistakes and more chronic stress.

A more colloquial view looks at specific sources of stress in police work. The sources of stress most often actually cited are:

The fear of killing someone in the line of duty.

Having your partner or somebody else that you feel at least partly responsible for killed in the line of duty.

Lack of support by the department or superiors.

The scheduling of work and irregular work demands resulting in a disruption of family time or family events or rituals.

The daily grind of dealing with the stupidity of the public, or the "asshole factor".

Other more academic studies have produced similar lists, but may include items that the more colloquial surveys do not reveal, such as 'exposure to neglected, battered, or dead children'

Again, the actual fear of occupational death or physical harm is not high on the list of stress sources.

There have been numerous academic studies on the specific sources of police stress, and most conclude organizational culture and workload as the key issues in officer stress. Traumatic events are usually concluded to not be of sufficient scope or prevalence to account for prevalence of suicide, divorce, and substance abuse abnormalities.

Personality theories

Some of the more esoteric, least documented or cited, and more longstanding theories for police stress symptoms involves the interaction of the specifics of police work with the personalities of individual police officers. There has been a raging debate on the fringes of psychiatry as to whether there is something about police work that causes psychiatric symptomology and personality disorders or whether there are certain personalities susceptible to disorders that are attracted to police work. There are four general possibilities:

There is something about police work, the social structure, the work atmosphere, etc., which causes stresses or presents traumas that cause personality or psychiatric disorders resulting in symptoms such as suicide, divorce, violence, substance abuse, etc. (the foundations of this possibility are outlined above)

There is one or more personality types or people with certain tendencies or proclivities who are susceptible of developing personality or psychiatric disorders, regardless of their occupation, who because of their personality or preferences are attracted to police work, and then display symptoms of stress or disorders.

There is a combination of the two.

Or there is a combination and synergistic interaction of the two.

There are personality traits that have been used to determine police applicant desirability, specifically:

openness

conscientiousness

extroversion

agreeableness

neuroticism

Personality traits considered undesirable include:

hostility

lack of impulse control

substance abuse

psychosis

paranoia

There are other personality traits that are specifically not desired for police work that are equally well documented. However, there has been relatively little academic work cited regarding the personality traits attracted to police work. The nature of personality traits of people attracted to police work tends to be a matter of conjecture and anecdotal observations. The personalities of people who are actually in police work tends to be different from that which is purported to be desired by police departments. Police officers tend to be isolated and suspicious, view expression of emotions as a weakness, and find it hard to trust and confide in others. For example, police officers are often viewed by the public to be domineering, narcissistic, authoritarian, physically oppressive, and basically the opposite of the personality traits most often cited as being desirable in a police officer. There are studies that suggest that people who take risks are attracted to police work. There is a corresponding theory that police officers actually tend to be people seeking security and stability and are attracted to the job for the steady government paycheck and government pension and adverse to the risks of business, sales, or other occupations. There is ample evidence that there is something in police work that alters personality.

The theory that there is an interaction between the personality attracted to the work and the work itself is mostly conjecture. For example, people attracted to police work are thought to crave the respect and authority that they expect with a badge, gun, uniform, and commission, but most of the people that police officers come in contact with do not respect them, and their authority is strongly regulated and limited by law, policies, and procedures, setting up a conflict resulting in chronic stress.

Abuse of power

As police officers have considerable powers and are often supported by authorities who oversee them if accused of wrongdoing, abuses are inevitable on occasion.

Systematic cases

In dictatorial, corrupt, or weak states, police officers may carry out many criminal acts for the ruling regime with impunity. Examples are the Gestapo secret police in Nazi Germany, and the role of the police in the military dictatorship in Argentina in the 1970s. Institutional racism has been found in modern police forces.

Individual cases

Individual officers, or sometimes whole units, can be corrupt or carry out various other forms of misconduct; this occasionally happens in many forces, but is particularly problematic where police pay is very low unless supplemented by bribes. Police sometimes act with unwarranted brutality when they overreact to confrontational situations, to extract a confession from a person they may or may not genuinely suspect of being guilty, or in other circumstances. Instances of racism occur, even when the police force as a whole is not found to be racist.

See also

Cops (TV series)

Fictional police officers

Field Training Officer

List of slang terms for police officers

Military police

Peace officer

Police brutality

Police rank

Police procedural

President Grover Cleveland—former Sheriff of Erie County, New York

President Theodore Roosevelt—Deputy Sheriff in the Dakota Territory, and New York City Police Commissioner

References

External links

http://www.discoverpolicing.org

Metropolitan Police history

http://www.newscotlandyard.police.uk/foi/pdfs/other_information/corporate/operational_uniform_and_equipment.pdf

http://www.west-midlands.police.uk/publications/freedom-of-information/policy.asp?id=144

http://www.gmp.police.uk/mainsite/pages/pcsouniform.htm,ts=2

http://www.policelink.com

Category:Law enforcement occupations Category:People in law enforcement Officer

bg:Полицай cs:Policista da:Politibetjent de:Polizeibeamter eo:Policisto fr:Policier io:Policistaro he:שוטר lt:Policijos tarnautojas nl:Politieagent ja:警察官 scn:Custurinu simple:Police officer sk:Policajt sl:Policist sv:Polisman i Sverige tr:Polis memuru vi:Cảnh sát

Coordinates	°′″N°′″N
name	Seymour Hersh
birth date	April 08, 1937
birth place	Chicago, Illinois, United States
alma mater	University of Chicago
occupation	Journalist
spouse	Elizabeth Sarah Klein
awards	Polk Award (1969, 1973, 1974, 1981, 2004)Pulitzer Prize (1970)George Orwell Award (2004) }}

Seymour (Sy) Myron Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to ''The New Yorker'' magazine on military and security matters. He has also won two National Magazine Awards and is a "five-time Polk winner and recipient of the 2004 George Orwell Award."

He first gained worldwide recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His 2004 reports on the US military's mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison gained much attention.

Early years

Hersh was born in Chicago to Yiddish-speaking Lithuanian Jewish parents who immigrated to the US from Lithuania and Poland and ran a dry-cleaning shop in the far west side neighborhood of Chicago, called Austin. After graduating from the University of Chicago, with a history degree Hersh found himself struggling to find a job. He began working at a Walgreens before being accepted into University of Chicago Law School but was soon expelled for poor grades. After returning for a short time to Walgreens Hersh began his career in journalism as a police reporter for the City News Bureau in 1959. He later became a correspondent for United Press International in South Dakota. In 1963, he went on to become a Chicago and Washington correspondent for the Associated Press. While working in Washington Hersh first met and befriended I. F. Stone whose ''I. F. Stone's Weekly'' would serve as an initial inspiration for Hersh's later work. It was during this time that Hersh began to form his investigative style, often walking out of regimented press briefings at the Pentagon and seeking out one on one interviews with high ranking officers. After a falling out with the AP over their refusal to run a story on the US government's work on biological and chemical weapons Hersh left the AP and sold his story to ''The New Republic''. During the 1968 presidential election, he served as press secretary for the campaign of Senator Eugene McCarthy.

Vietnam and the New York Times

After leaving the McCarthy campaign, Hersh returned to journalism as a freelancer covering the Vietnam War. In 1969, Hersh received a tip from Geoffrey Cowan of The Village Voice regarding an Army lieutenant being court-martialled for killing civilians in Vietnam. His subsequent investigation, sold to the Dispatch News Service, was run in thirty-three newspapers and exposed the My Lai massacre, winning him the Pulitzer Prize in 1970.

In 1972, Hersh was hired as a reporter for the Washington bureau of ''The New York Times'', where he served from 1972 to 1975 and again in 1979. Hersh was also active in investigating the Central Intelligence Agency's Project Jennifer.

After the New York Times

His 1983 book ''The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House'' won him the National Book Critics Circle Award and the ''Los Angeles Times'' book prize in biography. In 1985, Hersh contributed to the PBS television documentary ''Buying the Bomb''. In 1993 Hersh became a regular contributor to The New Yorker.

Hersh has appeared regularly on the ''Democracy Now!'' show.

Selected stories

My Lai Massacre

On November 12, 1969, Hersh broke the story of the My Lai Massacre, in which hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians were murdered by US soldiers in March 1968. The report prompted widespread condemnation around the world and reduced public support for the Vietnam War in the United States. The explosive news of the massacre fueled the outrage of the US peace movement, which demanded the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. Hersh wrote about the massacre and its cover-up in ''My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath'' and ''Cover-up: The Army's Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4''. A movie was produced, based on this book, by Italian director Paolo Bertola in 2009.

Project Jennifer

In early 1974, Hersh had planned to publish a story on Project Jennifer, the code name for a CIA project to recover a sunken Soviet navy submarine from the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Bill Kovach, ''The New York Times'' Washington, DC bureau chief at the time, said in 2005 that the government offered a convincing argument to delay publication in early 1974—exposure at that time, while the project was ongoing, "would have caused an international incident." The ''NYT'' eventually published its account in 1975, after a story appeared in the ''Los Angeles Times'', and included a five-paragraph explanation of the many twists and turns in the path to publication. It is unclear what, if any, action was taken by the Soviet Union after learning of the story.

KAL 007

In his 1986 book ''The Target is Destroyed'' (Random House), Hersh alleged that the Soviet shooting down of Korean Air Flight 007 in September 1983 was due to a combination of Soviet incompetence and United States intelligence operations intended to confuse Soviet responses.

Later releases of government information confirmed that there was a PSYOPS campaign against the Soviet Union that had been in place from the first few months of the Reagan administration. This campaign included the largest US Pacific Fleet exercise ever held, in April to May 1983. The report states that the Soviets, "probably didn't know (KAL 007) was a civilian aircraft" and uses Hersh's book as a reference for the PSYOPS campaign.

Mordechai Vanunu and Robert Maxwell

In his 1991 book ''The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy'', Hersh wrote that Nicholas Davies, the foreign editor of ''The Daily Mirror'', had tipped off the Israeli embassy in London about whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu. Vanunu had given information about Israel's nuclear weapons program first to ''The Sunday Times'' and later to the ''Sunday Mirror''. At the time, the ''Sunday Mirror'' and its sibling newspaper, the ''Daily Mirror'' were owned by media magnate Robert Maxwell who was alleged to have had contacts with Israel's intelligence services. According to Hersh, Davies had also worked for the Mossad. Vanunu was later lured by Mossad from London to Rome, kidnapped, returned to Israel, and sentenced to 18 years in jail. Davies and Maxwell published an anti-Vanunu story that was claimed to be part of a disinformation campaign on behalf of the Israeli government.

Hersh repeated the allegations during a press conference held in London to publicize his book. No British newspaper would publish the allegations because of Maxwell's famed litigiousness. However, two British MPs raised the matter in the House of Commons, which meant that British newspapers were able to report what had been said without fear of being sued for libel. Maxwell called the claims "ludicrous, a total invention". He fired Nick Davies shortly thereafter.

Attack on pharmaceutical factory in Sudan

On August 20, 1998, Hersh strongly criticized the destruction of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory, the largest pharmaceutical factory in Sudan—providing about half the medicines produced in Sudan—by United States cruise missiles during Bill Clinton's presidency.

Iraq

Hersh has written a series of articles for ''The New Yorker'' magazine detailing military and security matters surrounding the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. In March 2002 he described the planning process for a new invasion of Iraq that had been on-going since the end of the First Gulf War, under the leadership of Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Fried and other neo-conservatives. In a 2004 article, he alleged that Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld circumvented the normal intelligence analysis function of the CIA in their quest to make the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Another article, ''Lunch with the Chairman'', led Richard Perle, a subject of the article, to call Hersh the "closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist."

A March 7, 2007 article entitled, "The Redirection" described the recent shift in the George W. Bush administration's Iraq policy, the goal of which is to "contain" Iran. Hersh points out that, "a by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda."

In May 2004, Hersh published a series of articles which described the treatment of detainees by US military police at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, Iraq. The articles included allegations that private military contractors contributed to prisoner mistreatment and that intelligence agencies such as the CIA ordered torture in order to break prisoners for interrogations. They also alleged that torture is a usual practice in other US-run prisons as well, e.g., in Bagram Theater Internment Facility and Guantanamo. In subsequent articles, Hersh claimed that the abuses were part of a secret interrogation program, known as "Copper Green". According to Hersh's sources, the program was expanded to Iraq with the direct approval of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, both in an attempt to deal with the growing insurgency there and as part of "Rumsfeld's long-standing desire to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A." Much of his material for these articles was based on the Army's own internal investigations.

Scott Ritter points out in his October 19, 2005 interview with Seymour Hersh that the US policy to remove Iraqi president Saddam Hussein from power started with US president George H. W. Bush in August 1990. Ritter concludes from public remarks by President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker that the Iraq sanctions would only be lifted when Hussein was removed from power. The justification for sanctions was disarmament. The CIA offered the opinion that containing Hussein for six months would result in the collapse of his regime. This policy resulted in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

MR. HERSH: One of the things about your book that's amazing is that it's not only about the Bush Administration, and if there are any villains in this book, they include Sandy Berger, who was Clinton's national security advisor, and Madeleine Albright.

Another thing that's breathtaking about this book is the amount of new stories and new information. Scott describes in detail and with named sources, basically, a two or three-year run of the American government undercutting the inspection process. In your view, during those years, '91 to'98, particularly the last three years, was the United States interested in disarming Iraq?

MR. RITTER: Well, the fact of the matter is the United States was never interested in disarming Iraq. The whole Security Council resolution that created the UN weapons inspections and called upon Iraq to disarm was focused on one thing and one thing only, and that is a vehicle for the maintenance of economic sanctions that were imposed in August 1990 linked to the liberation of Kuwait. We liberated Kuwait, I participated in that conflict. And one would think, therefore, the sanctions should be lifted.

The United States needed to find a vehicle to continue to contain Saddam because the CIA said all we have to do is wait six months and Saddam is going to collapse on his own volition. That vehicle is sanctions. They needed a justification; the justification was disarmament. They drafted a Chapter 7 resolution of the United Nations Security Council calling for the disarmament of Iraq and saying in Paragraph 14 that if Iraq complies, sanctions will be lifted. Within months of this resolution being passed--and the United States drafted and voted in favor of this resolution--within months, the President, George Herbert Walker Bush, and his Secretary of State, James Baker, are saying publicly, not privately, publicly that even if Iraq complies with its obligation to disarm, economic sanctions will be maintained until which time Saddam Hussein is removed from power.

That is proof positive that disarmament was only useful insofar as it contained through the maintenance of sanctions and facilitated regime change. It was never about disarmament, it was never about getting rid of weapons of mass destruction. It started with George Herbert Walker Bush, and it was a policy continued through eight years of the Clinton presidency, and then brought us to this current disastrous course of action under the current Bush Administration.

Iran

In January 2005, Hersh alleged that the US was conducting covert operations in Iran to identify targets for possible strikes. Hersh also claimed that Pakistan and the United States have struck a "Khan-for-Iran" deal in which Washington will look the other way at Pakistan's nuclear transgressions and not demand handing over of its nuclear proliferator A Q Khan, in return for Islamabad's cooperation in neutralising Iran's nuclear plans. This was also denied by officials of the governments of the US and Pakistan.

In the April 17, 2006 issue of ''The New Yorker'', Hersh reported on the Bush administration's purported plans for an air strike on Iran. Of particular note in his article is that a US nuclear first strike (possibly using the B61-11 bunker-buster nuclear weapon) is under consideration to eliminate underground Iranian uranium enrichment facilities. In response, President Bush cited Hersh's reportage as "wild speculation."

When, in October 2007, asked on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's hawkish views on Iran, Hersh claimed that Jewish donations were the main reason for these:

While speaking at a journalism conference recently, Hersh claimed that after the Strait of Hormuz incident, members of the Bush administration met in vice president Dick Cheney's office to consider methods of initiating a war with Iran. One idea considered was staging a false flag operation involving the use of Navy SEALs dressed as Iranian PT boaters who would engage in a firefight with US ships. This idea was shot down. This claim has not been verified.

Lebanon

In August 2006, in an article in ''The New Yorker'', Hersh claimed that the White House gave the green light for the Israeli government to execute an attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Supposedly, communication between the Israeli government and the US government about this came as early as two months in advance of the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight others by Hezbollah prior to the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict in July 2006. The US government denied these claims.

Criticism

Kennedy research

Hersh's 1997 book about John F. Kennedy, ''The Dark Side of Camelot'', made a number of controversial assertions about the former president, including that he had had a "first marriage" to a woman named Durie Malcolm that was never terminated, that he had been a semi-regular narcotics user, that he had a close working relationship with mob boss Sam Giancana which supposedly included vote fraud in one or two crucial states in the 1960 presidential election. For many of these claims, Hersh relied only on hearsay collected decades after the event. In a ''Los Angeles Times'' review, Edward Jay Epstein cast doubt on these and other assertions, writing, "this book turns out to be, alas, more about the deficiencies of investigative journalism than about the deficiencies of John F. Kennedy." Responding to the book, historian and former Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called Hersh "the most gullible investigative reporter I've ever encountered."

Hersh repeatedly described Kennedy as a playboy and implied that many journalists were aware of his womanizing but turned a blind eye, even ignoring or denigrating witnesses to the infidelity who wanted to go public. One of Hersh's assertions on his theme, however, is backed with erroneous references (and remains unsubstantiated). The author identified one Florence M. Kater as a "middle-aged housewife" who supposedly knew of Kennedy's womanizing during his 1960 presidential campaign. According to Hersh, this woman, who was allegedly the former landlady of JFK's senatorial aide/love interest Pamela Turnure, decided in 1959 to break the news on this topic. Inexplicably, "in late 1958" (the year ''before'' she decided to go public) she "ambushed Kennedy leaving the new apartment [to which Turnure allegedly moved to escape Kater's eavesdropping] at three A.M. and took a photograph of the unhappy senator attempting to shield his face with a handkerchief."

Hersh did not publish such a photograph in ''The Dark Side of Camelot'' or cite an interview with Florence Kater. She died many years before he started work on the book. If another writer or journalist ever interviewed her, Hersh did not use such a source. In the book he asserted that Kater had attended a 1960 presidential campaign stop near Washington, DC carrying a blow-up of her alleged photograph of an adulterous Sen. Kennedy attempting to shield his face.

"Kater was not taken seriously by the national press corps," wrote Hersh, "but she came close to attracting media attention. On May 14, 1960, just four days after Kennedy won the West Virginia primary, she approached him at a political rally at the University of Maryland carrying a placard with an enlarged snapshot of the early-morning scene outside Pamela Turnure's apartment. Kennedy ignored her, but a photograph of the encounter was published in the next afternoon's ''Washington Star'', along with a brief story describing her as a heckler.". A paralegal named Lawrence Cusack had shared them with Hersh and encouraged the author to discuss them in the book. Shortly before Hersh's publicized announcement, federal investigators began probing Cusack's sale of the documents at auction. After ''The Dark Side of Camelot'' became a bestseller, Cusack was convicted by a federal jury in Manhattan of forging the documents and sentenced to a long prison term. The documents signed by "John F. Kennedy" included a provision, in 1960, for a trust fund to be set up for the institutionalized mother of Marilyn Monroe. In 1997 the Kennedy family denied Cusack's claim that his late father had been an attorney who had represented JFK in 1960.

Use of anonymous sources

Some have criticized Hersh's use of anonymous sources in his reporting; implying that some of these sources are unreliable or even made up. In a review of Hersh's book, ''Chain of Command'', commentator Amir Taheri wrote, "As soon as he has made an assertion he cites a 'source' to back it. In ''every case'' this is either an un-named former official or an unidentified secret document passed to Hersh in unknown circumstances... By my count Hersh has anonymous 'sources' inside 30 foreign governments and virtually every department of the U.S. government."

David Remnick, the editor of ''The New Yorker'', maintains that he is aware of the identity of all of Hersh's unnamed sources, telling the ''Columbia Journalism Review'' that "I know every single source that is in his pieces.... Every 'retired intelligence officer,' every general with reason to know, and all those phrases that one has to use, alas, by necessity, I say, 'Who is it? What's his interest?' We talk it through."

In a response to an article in ''The New Yorker'' in which Hersh alleged that the U.S. government was planning a strike on Iran, U.S. Defense Department spokesman Brian Whitman said, "This reporter has a solid and well-earned reputation for making dramatic assertions based on thinly sourced, unverifiable anonymous sources."

Speeches

Those who criticize Hersh's credibility especially point to allegations Hersh has made in public speeches and interviews, rather than in print. In an interview with ''New York'' magazine, Hersh made a distinction between the standards of strict factual accuracy for his print reporting and the leeway he allows himself in speeches, in which he may talk informally about stories still being worked on or blur information to protect his sources. "Sometimes I change events, dates, and places in a certain way to protect people... I can’t fudge what I write. But I can certainly fudge what I say."

Some of Hersh's speeches concerning the Iraq War have described violent incidents involving U.S. troops in Iraq. In July 2004, during the height of the Abu Ghraib scandal, he alleged that American troops sexually assaulted young boys:

In a subsequent interview with ''New York'' magazine, Hersh regretted that "I actually didn’t quite say what I wanted to say correctly...it wasn’t that inaccurate, but it was misstated. The next thing I know, it was all over the blogs. And I just realized then, the power of—and so you have to try and be more careful." In his book, ''Chain of Command'', he wrote that one of the witness statements he had read described the rape of a boy by a foreign contract interpreter at Abu Ghraib, during which a woman took pictures.

Link between the US government and Fatah al-Islam

In March 2007 Hersh asserted in a piece in ''The New Yorker'' that the United States and Saudi governments were funding the terrorist organization Fatah al-Islam through aid to Lebanese Sunni Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Following the publishing of the story journalists in Beirut uncovered that Hersh put forth the claim without any reliable sources. Hersh had heard the unconfirmed story from Robert Fisk who had, in turn, heard the story from former British intelligence agent Alastair Crooke. Crooke had only heard it circulated as rumor and no one had fact checked the claims before Hersh ran the story which prompted a variety of criticisms.

Morarji Desai Libel Suit

Hersh claimed in his 1983 book ''The Price of Power'' that former Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai had been paid $20,000 a year by the CIA during the Johnson and Nixon administration. Desai called the allegation "a scandalous and malicious lie" and filed a $50 million libel suit against Hersh. By the time the case went to trial Desai, by then 93, was too ill to attend. CIA director Richard Helms and Henry Kissinger testified under oath that at no time did Desai act in any capacity for the CIA, paid or otherwise. Since Hersh did not have to take the stand or reveal the name of his alleged source, the Judge found in favor of Hersh.

Publications

Books

Hersh, Seymour M. (1968), ''Chemical and Biological Warfare: America's Hidden Arsenal'', New York, New York: Bobbs-Merrill (US) and London: MacGibbon & Kee (UK). ISBN 0-586-03295-9.

Hersh, Seymour M. (1970). ''My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath''. Random House. ISBN 0-394-43737-3.

Hersh, Seymour M. (1972). ''Cover-up: the Army's secret investigation of the massacre at My Lai 4''. Random House. ISBN 0-394-47460-0.

Hersh, Seymour M. (1983). ''The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House''. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-44760-2. Excerpts from The Price of Power hosted by Third World Traveler

Hersh, Seymour M. (1986). ''The Target Is Destroyed: What Really Happened to Flight 007 and What America Knew About It''. Random House. ISBN 0-394-54261-4.

Hersh, Seymour M. (1991). ''The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy''. Random House. ISBN 0-394-57006-5.

Hersh, Seymour M. (1997). ''The Dark Side of Camelot''. Little, Brown & Company. ISBN 0-316-36067-8.

Hersh, Seymour M. (1998). ''Against All Enemies: Gulf War Syndrome: The War Between America's Ailing Veterans and Their Government''. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-42748-3.

Hersh, Seymour M. (2004). ''Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib''. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-019591-6.

Hersh, Seymour M. (TBD). [book on the Cheney vice presidency]

Articles/Reportage

"Full list of published articles in the New Yorker

"Huge CIA Operation Reported in US against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents During Nixon Years" by Seymour Hersh, ''New York Times'', December 22, 1974 — Hersh's article detailing CIA covert operations which eventually led to the formation of the Church Committee.

Forewords

Hersh, Seymour M. (foreword) (2005) in Scott Ritter: ''Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein'' (Hardcover), Nation Books, ISBN 1-56025-852-7

See also

Church Committee (''United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities''. Hersh's December 22, 1974 New York Times article on CIA operations was the main reason for the creation of this committee)

Ari Ben-Menashe

Mordechai Vanunu

Robert Maxwell

Opposition to war against Iran

References

External links

Seymour Hersh Interviewed by Mehdi Hasan

Articles

"Current State of Investigating Reporting", talk given at BU, May 19 2009

"Overwhelming Force" — What happened in the final days of the Gulf War?, ''The New Yorker'', May 22, 2000 issue

"The Cold Test" — What the Administration knew about Pakistan and the North Korean nuclear program., ''The New Yorker'', January 27, 2003 issue

"Lunch with the Chairman" — Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?, ''The New Yorker'', March 17, 2003 issue

"Who Lied to Whom?" — Why did the Administration endorse a forgery about Iraq’s nuclear program?, ''The New Yorker'', March 31, 2003 issue

"Offense and Defense" — The battle between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon., ''The New Yorker'', April 7, 2003 issue

"Selective Intelligence" — Selective Intelligence, ''The New Yorker'', May 12, 2003 issue

"The Syrian Bet" — Did the Bush Admin. burn a useful source on Al Qaeda? ''The New Yorker'', July 28, 2003 issue

"The Stovepipe" — How conflicts between the Bush Admin. and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraq’s weapons. ''The New Yorker'', October 27, 2003 issue

"Moving Targets" — Will the counter-insurgency plan in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?. ''The New Yorker'', December 15, 2003 issue

"The Deal" — Why is Washington going easy on Pakistan’s nuclear black marketers? ''The New Yorker'', March 8, 2004 issue

"The Other War" — Why Bush’s Afghanistan problem won’t go away., ''The New Yorker'', April 12, 2004 issue

"Torture at Abu Ghraib" — American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?, ''The New Yorker'', May 10, 2004 issue

"Chain of Command" — How the Department of Defense mishandled the disaster at Abu Ghraib, ''The New Yorker'', May 17, 2004 issue

"The Gray Zone" — How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib, ''The New Yorker'', May 24, 2004 issue

"Plan B" — As June 30 approaches, Israel looks to the Kurds, ''The New Yorker'', June 28, 2004 issue

"The Coming Wars" — What the Pentagon can now do in secret, ''The New Yorker'', January 24, 2005 issue and the response by the Department of Defense

"Watergate Days", ''The New Yorker'', June 13, 2005 issue

"Get Out the Vote" — Did Washington try to manipulate Iraq's Elections?, ''The New Yorker'', July 25, 2005 issue

"Up in the Air" — Where is the Iraq war headed next?, ''The New Yorker'', December 5, 2005 issue

"The Iran Plans" — Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?, ''The New Yorker'', April 17, 2006 issue

"Last Stand" — The military's dissent on Iran policy., ''The New Yorker'', July 10 & 17 2006 issue

"Watching Lebanon" — Washington’s interests in Israel’s war., ''The New Yorker'', August 21, 2006 issue

"The Next Act" — Is a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more?, ''The New Yorker'', November 27, 2006 issue

"The Redirection" — Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?, ''The New Yorker'', March 5, 2007 issue

"The General's Report" — How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties, ''The New Yorker'', June 25, 2007 issue

"Shifting Targets" — The Administration’s plan for Iran, ''The New Yorker'', October 8, 2007 issue

"A Strike in the Dark" — What did Israel bomb in Syria?, ''The New Yorker'', February 11, 2008 issue

"Preparing the Battlefield" — The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran, ''The New Yorker'', July 7, 2008 issue

"Syria Calling" — The Obama Administration’s chance to engage in a Middle East peace, ''The New Yorker'', April 6, 2009 issue

"Defending the Arsenal" — In an unstable Pakistan, can nuclear warheads be kept safe?, ''The New Yorker'', November 16, 2009 issue

"The Online Threat" — Should we be worried about a cyber war?, ''The New Yorker'', November 1, 2010 issue

"Iran and the Bomb" — How real is the nuclear threat?, ''The New Yorker'', June 6, 2011 issue

THE TRAITOR The case against Jonathan Pollard The New Yorker, January 18, 1999

Category:1937 births Category:American Jews Category:American investigative journalists Category:The New Yorker staff writers Category:Espionage writers Category:George Polk Award recipients Category:Jewish American writers Category:Living people Category:My Lai Massacre Category:The New York Times people Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting winners Category:University of Chicago alumni Category:War correspondents Category:Worth Bingham Prize recipients Category:American people of the Vietnam War

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