Critical thinking paper Based exclusively on the vast and diverse course assigned materials (the textbook, the recommended books, the online short readings, the PowerPoint slides, the videos or video synopses, and the current issues in the news announcements) write a critical thinking paper in which (1) you mention briefly the background of the Iraq war (the Palestine-Israel conflict, the Cold War wars, and the Afghan jihad of the 1980s), (2) you discuss briefly the what of the Iraq war (how many U.S. soldiers were killed, how much money was allocated to the war, how military operations were conducted, how many Iraqis were killed or displaced, etc.), (3) you elaborate on the REAL why and who of the Iraq war (whether the United States invaded Iraq to search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, spread democracy into Iraq, control Iraqi oil, protect Israel from Iraq, protect Arab Gulf states from Iraq, destroy an ally of Al-Qaeda, or achieve other objectives), and (4) you discuss briefly the links between the Iraq war and the so-called Arab spring uprisings since December 2010. The critical thinking paper must be formatted as a Microsoft Word file (according to the detailed guidelines for the critical thinking paper on pages 3 and 4 of the syllabus) and uploaded through the TurnItIn link.