President Bush’s January 28, 2003, State of the Union address made claims of Iraq buying yellowcake uranium from Niger, which had already been unsubstantiated by the CIA. “A new firestorm ignited and the question quickly arose over who put the faulty assertion in the speech.” CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen […]
Category: quotes
7/11/2003
“On July 11, 2003, [CIA Director George] Tenet released a statement in which he sought to explain how the ‘sixteen words’ [about Iraq attempting to purchase uranium from Niger] had ended up in the State of the Union speech [by President Bush on January 28, 2003]. ‘First, CIA approved the President’s State of the Union […]
7/11/2003
On July 11, 2003, “President Bush and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told reporters traveling with the president in Africa that the CIA had approved the language in the [January 28, 2003] State of the Union address [which claimed Iraq sought to purchase uranium from Niger]. ‘I gave a speech to the nation that […]
7/10/2003
“On July 10 [2003], when John Cochran of ABC News asked [Secretary of State Colin] Powell in Pretoria [South Africa] if the [Bush] administration owed the world an apology for having used the yellowcake claim, Powell dismissed the whole to-do: ‘This is very overwrought and overblown and overdrawn. …You get information, you analyze it. Sometimes, […]
7/10/2003
On July 10, 2003, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said, regarding the Niger/Iraq yellowcake incident: ” ‘I can tell you, if the Director of Central Intelligence [George Tenet] had said, ‘Take this out of the [2003 State of the Union] speech,’ it would have been gone, without question. …It would not have been in the […]
7/10/2003
“On July 10 [2003], when asked by Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor at an Armed Services Committee hearing when he had learned that the reports of Iraq seeking uranium from Africa ‘were bogus,’ [Secretary of Defense] Donald Rumsfeld responded, ‘Oh, within recent days, since the information started becoming available.’ ([Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency […]
7/9/2003
On July 9, 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said to the Senate Armed Services Committee: “The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq’s pursuit of WMD; we acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light–through the prism of our experience on 9/11.” – […]
7/9/2003
In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 9, 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld “acknowledged that the [Bush] administration ‘did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass murder. We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light, through […]
7/9/2003
In a statement to the 9/11 Commission on July 9, 2003, American Enterprise Institute scholar Laurie Mylroie “concluded that ‘the major terrorist strikes against the U.S. that were attributed to ‘loose networks’ of Islamic militants, including al Qaeda, are much better explained as Iraq, working with and hiding behind the militants.’ ” – Peter Lance, […]
7/9/2003
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, then-Commander of the ground forces in Iraq, wrote: “On July 9 [2003], the Iranian army seized a disputed southern border post inside Iraq and, from a diplomatic standpoint, all hell broke loose. We had to be prepared to reestablish the recognized international boundaries of Iraq. …After securing an agreement to maintain […]