The Watergate complex is the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Richard Nixon was the president at the time and he was a republican. On June 17, 1972, five men broke into the Democratic National Committee's office. The five men were later arrested and charged with attempted burglary. In early August 1972, a $25,000 dollar check for Nixon's re-election campaign was found in one of the burglars' bank account. Some of the other burglars' bank accounts also contained money that was given to them in the name of the Republican Re-Election Committee. In 1972, the government found out that John Mitchell controlled a secret fund for trying to gain intelligence on the Democrats.
The purpose and reasoning behind the break in was never really known for sure. On August 9th, 1974, President Nixon resigned from office.
This event is pretty confusing to me. I'm sure stuff like this happens all the time now, and people just don't always get caught. This probably wasn't the first time that people have tried to gain information about the re-elections.
The Persian Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War was fought from August 2nd, 1990, to February 28th, 1991.
The tensions began to rise when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and annexed Kuwait. The U.S., U.K., Egypt, and Saudi Arabia were the main countries that sent their military to Kuwait.
The war started when we dropped about 90,000 tons of bombs on Iraq. Our main intent was to destroy all of Iraq's AA equipment and the Air Force's facilities. Our last phase of our air strikes targeted Scud missile launching facilities. Scuds are ballistic missiles.
Later on, Iraq launched eight Scud missiles at Israel. Since Israel was a long target for the Iraqi Scuds, they didn't cause that much damage.
We had won the air war easily, but the ground war was much more evenly matched. The U.S. and Kuwait easily cleared out the Iraqi resistance in Kuwait. We then moved into southern Iraq. On the 26th of February, 1991, the Iraqi military began retreating from Kuwait. Before the Iraqis retreated, they set many Kuwaiti oil fields on fire. While the Iraqis were retreating on one of the main highways, our planes bomb them and killed hundreds. A few days after the ground war had started, President Bush declared a cease-fire. He also declared that Kuwait had been freed from Iraq.
I think that this was the right decision, and I'm sure we almost had to since we are allies to Kuwait. We didn't want Iraq to gain more power and money by taking over Kuwait.
9/11 and the Invasion of Afghanistan
The 9/11 attacks were a series of suicide plane attacks on the U.S. that were performed by Al-Qaeda terrorists. On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists hijacked four planes and crashed them into the two twin towers, the Pentagon, and a farm field.
The plane that crashed into the farm field was intended to go somewhere else until the passengers overthrew the terrorists. The two Twin Towers collapsed within two hours along with some nearby buildings. No one survived from any of the flights. Around 3000 people died in the crashes. This resulted in our invasion of Afghanistan.
There has been some conspiracy theories about the attacks. Some theories state that some officials inside the government were involved in this. They think that some bombs were placed in the Twin Towers before the planes even crashed. Some also say that some government officials wanted an excuse to go to Afghanistan.
In early October of 2001, we officially launched an invasion on Afghanistan. We started off by bombing the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul. Within the first few days, many of the Taliban's training facilities were destroyed. Many people from Pakistan came to help the Afghans fight us. We continued to bomb the daylights out of Afghanistan.
During the first few months of the war, the Americans mainly used planes. There has been many big battles in Afghanistan. The war is still going, but we wiped out the Taliban.
I think that invading Afghanistan was our only option. There was obviously no diplomatic way around this. Al-Qaeda wants war, and we can't really do anything about it, except fight them. It seems like this war will never end. I think Al-Qaeda has carried the whole "God's Will" thing a little too far.
The Invasion of Iraq in 2003.
On March 20, 2003, The U.S. and some of our allies invaded Iraq. Around 300,000 troops were involved in the invasion.
The reason we invaded Iraq was because they had nuclear and chemical weapons. I would think that some U.S. cities would be a prime target for those nuclear warheads. The U.S. also wanted to neutralize Saddam Hussein. I am sure that oil played an important part in reasons for invading Iraq, too. Later on, in 2005, the CIA confirmed that there had not been any nuclear bombs discovered in Iraq. I assume that this was just a cover up so the U.S. people would not be scared, or Saddam just did a good job of hiding them.
France and Germany did not agree with us invading Iraq. This was probably because Iraq was not a big threat to them. Those countries did not agree, because the U.S. did not find any of Iraq's nuclear missiles.
The invasion was started by an U.S. air strike on the Presidential Palace of Iraq. The next day, we attacked the Basra province, which is located on the southern edge of Iraq on the Persian Gulf Coast. The U.S. pretty well had their way with the Iraqi forces. Once Baghdad was conquered, Saddam Hussein and his comrades went into hiding.
The actual invasion itself only lasted 21 days. The U.S. brought a lot of troops over to Iraq, but some of them never saw any action. A lot more soldiers had to be used during the aftermath of the invasion. The Iraqis military equipment couldn't be compared to the equipment of the U.S. and U.K. America's Air Force dominated the Iraqis as they provided air strikes on Iraqi's artillery such as tanks. America maintained air supremacy. This means having a lot of control in the air. The Iraqi army had no confidence and they surrendered frequently. On May 1st, 2003, President Bush declared that all major battle operations were ending in Iraq. 139 American soldiers lost their lives during the invasion. Man have died since we started to try to maintain order in Iraq.
Although President Bush has been criticized much for this, I think he did the right thing. With terrorists being so willing to die, and possibly have nuclear bombs, I don't think that there was any other choice. If I were president, I would have done the same thing. After 9/11, I'm bet they thought the worst is yet to come. Although their were no nukes found, I don't see how Saddam wouldn't of had many nukes.
Sources-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq
http://www.freebase.com/view/en/2003_invasion_of_iraq
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1791.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_%282001%E2%80%93present%29
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0838511.html
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