Short answers, pulled from the story.
The name Iraq has several proposed origins. One traces it to the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk. Another derives it from the Middle Persian word erag, meaning lowlands. In Arabic, the word means hem, shore, bank, or edge. The sixth-century poet Adi ibn Zayd used the name in pre-Islamic poetry, and the tenth-century geographer al-Maqdisi defended it as the only name in use in his time.
Iraq is called the cradle of civilization because Mesopotamia, the region between its Tigris and Euphrates rivers, saw the emergence of the world's earliest cities starting in the 6th millennium BC. The civilizations of Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria developed there, producing the first writing systems, the wheel, the sailboat, mathematics, astrology, timekeeping, and the first known law code.
Iraq gained formal independence in 1932, becoming a member of the League of Nations. The country had been under British administration as the Mandate of Mesopotamia since 1920, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. The Hashemite king Faisal I had been installed by the British in 1921.
Saddam Hussein rose to power through the Ba'ath Party, which took control of Iraq in the 17th of July Revolution of 1968 under President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. Saddam served as vice-president while gradually consolidating real authority. On the 16th of July 1979, he acceded to the presidency and chairmanship of the Revolutionary Command Council, Iraq's supreme executive body at the time.
ISIS expanded in Iraq from 2013 onward, exploiting the chaos and popular discontent against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government following the US withdrawal in 2011. Ba'athist and Sunni militants, including al-Qaeda and ISIS, launched attacks during what became known as the Anbar campaign, which preceded a large-scale ISIS offensive that seized Mosul and other major cities. Iraq declared victory over ISIS in December 2017 after a US-backed counter-offensive.
Iraq holds 143.1 billion barrels of proved oil reserves, placing it third in the world behind Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Oil has traditionally provided about 95% of Iraq's foreign exchange earnings. Iraq was one of the founding members of OPEC, and during the 1970s produced up to 3.5 million barrels per day.