<p>Iraq's post-invasion history was turbulent and the wave of politically motivated violence washed away by the ambitious optimism formed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the country's new transformation plans that had been swept away by politically enhanced violence.</p>
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<p>What began as a highly fragmented local insurgency later turned into a sustained insurgency that spread to central and southern Iraq. At the time of Iraq's first democratic elections in 2005, there was no doubt that the insurgency had developed into a bloody civil war justified on sectarian terms, marking the turning point in Iraq two years after the start of the civil war in 2007.&nbsp;</p>
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