“The next chance to target [al-Qaida deputy Ayman] al-Zawahri came in mid-March 2004, former officials said. A detainee in U.S. custody passed along information about a possible al-Qaida hideout in the mountainous northwest Pakistani region of South Waziristan, where government troops, helicopters and planes were mounting a military offensive against militants. The CIA passed the […]
Category: quotes
3/15/2004
“Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March [2004] just off the Senate floor. I [journalist Ron Suskind] was there as a guest speaker. [Senator] Joe Biden [D-DE] was telling a story, a story about the president [Bush]. ‘I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,’ he […]
3/15/2004
“As [chief UN weapons inspector] Hans Blix would later say (on the Today Show, March 15, 2004) about the Bush administration: ‘I think they had a set mind [for war in Iraq]. They wanted to come to the conclusion that there were weapons of mass destruction. …They were wrong. There wasn’t anything.’ ” – Vincent […]
3/14/2004
On March 14, 2004, “the day after winning the election, the prime minister of Spain’s newly elected government, Jose Zapatero, promised to withdraw Spain’s 1,300 troops from Iraq, saying, ‘The war [in Iraq] has been a disaster [and] the occupation continues to be a disaster. It has only generated violence.’ ” – Raymond Ibrahim, ed./trans., […]
3/13/2004
“According to one former senior Pentagon official [per The Washington Post on March 13, 2004] who worked closely with [Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas] Feith’s offices [Office of Special Plans], their goal was not just ‘how to fight Saddam Hussein but also how to fight the NSC [National Security Council], the State Department, and […]
3/13/2004
In Spain, “On 13 March [2004] a videotape was placed in a bin near a Madrid mosque containing a message claiming responsibility for the [March 11, 2004] train bombs from al Qaeda in Europe. This was the first time this ‘umbrella’ name had been used.” – Abdel Bari Atwan, The Secret History of al Qaeda, […]
3/12/2004
On March 12, 2004, President “Bush asked [Deputy Attorney General James] Comey and [FBI Director Robert] Mueller to speak with him privately in his study, one by one. …Comey told Bush that his staff was disserving him. …Bush had changed his mind and authorized [Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel Jack] Goldsmith to try […]
3/12/2004
Deputy Attorney General James Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller met with President Bush on March 12, 2004, regarding the Terrorist Surveillance Program that illegally authorized domestic wiretapping. According to a confidential FBI source: ” ‘Mueller and Comey were probably the first lawyers to tell the President that the program was illegal,’ the confidant said. […]
3/11/2004
As a train pulled into Atocha station in Madrid, Spain, at 6:39 a.m. on March 11, 2004, “three bombs exploded in the third, fourth, and sixth cars. Almost simultaneously, four more bombs exploded in the first, fourth, and sixth cars of a second train, about 500 meters outside the station. …At 6:41 A.M., two bombs […]
3/11/2004
“Al Qaeda was probably involved in the March [11] 2004 attack on Madrid [Spain]‘s metro system as well, the largest terrorist attack in Europe since World War II. Bin Laden and [al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-] Zawahiri now routinely claim this as one of their ‘raids’ into the West and point to its impact on […]