Three Kings is a satirical war film based around a gold heist that took place during the 1991 iraqui uprising against Saddam Hussein following the end of the Gulf war.  The film stars George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube and Spike Jonze.  The film opens at an American war camp.  We are shown the daily lives of these men out in the dessert.  The main characters find a map in an iraqui mans butt and use it to go find all of saddams hidden gold in bunkers.  Along the way though they get sidetracked by the people they meet and decide to help save them by getting them across the Iranian border instead of just stealing all the gold. They are successful in saving the people and the gold is returned back to Kuwait.. with a few missing. All in all i really enjoyed this movie, it gave me a new perspective on how the war was fought. 

The Iran-Iraq war took place from 1980-1990 between Ayatollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein.  The war broke out in fear that the revolution would spread to Iraq. This war was one based on religion even though they north tried to gain as much new territory as they possibly could. In the Iraq Kuwait war George bush gathered 30 countries to join in a coalition against Iraq.  They made sure that Israel wouldn't join in fear of losing the Arab support.  Kuwait was liberated after 4 days and 90,000 iraqi casualties.  Kuwait and the gulf war were greatly around religious reasonings, although oil wells were blown up and it took months for people to extinguish them. The exportation of oil from this are was however put on hold for awhile, with not very much export leaving Iraq.  Saddam Hussein also broke international laws by launching SCUD missiles on not only Iranians, but also on his own people the Kurds as well.  In conclusion, both these wars were religiously based with a minor influence from oil. 

The outcome of the War of independence was that the Israel's gained a lot of new territory starting from the partition to the Negev Dessert.  This caused many Palestine's to become refugees and start small terrorist attacks on the jewish within Israel. The Suez Crisis was a major point in history because it shifted the influence of power within the region from British and French to Russian and American.  Nasser at the time nationalized the Canal declaring then that the Israel's were no longer aloud to use the canal for trade. However, the Israel's had a policy to attack first before they were attacked giving them the upper hand. They were so powerful that the Americans forced them to stop, they brought in the first series of UN peacekeepers introduced by Lester B. Pearson.  The outcome was essentially the change over in power as well as the Jewish's economy flourishing. The 6 day war started when Nasser expelled the UN peacekeepers from the Canal area.  The Isreal's know of the upcoming attack through secret intelligence and follow through with their attack-first policy.  They destroy the Egyptians airforce as well as taking vast amounts of new territory (Senai Pennisula, Golan Heights, and the West Bank).  The entire war lasted 6 days and in the end the Israel's said they would return their land if guaranteed peace something that they had never had assurance of. Yom Kippur War was the Egyptians plan for another secret attack, this time it was planned over the Yom Kippur holiday.  They have gains in territory at the beginning but then the US sends aid into Israel.  The war ultimately ends with the borders remaining unchanged. OPEC then raised the oil prices by 70% making the west push strongly for a settlement.  The Yom Kippur War was another shift in war altercations.  After 1973 wars became largely based over resources instead of religion as they were previously. This all furthered the establishment of Israel as a country because they proved that they could stand up for themselves and they weren't going down without a fight. 

France and Britain made matters worse because all they did was solely based on their greed for the land and the resources that this area possessed.  They installed new arab governments in all the countries besides Palestine.  These governments were all created with royal descendants which not only kept the royal lines continuing in these new areas but also let Britain and France maintain some control.  They did not install this government in Palestine because it was considered such "holy land". The French did have one positive impact however with the creation of the Suez Canal which made it a lot easier for trading with Asia to occur.  The United Nations did fulfill their mandate in trying to create world peace in this area, they created a proposal which should have been fine.  The Jewish were happy with it.  They just did not suspect the Arabs to be so difficult and basically impossible to please.