“Since May 2003, a new branch of al Qaeda–al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula–has been active within Saudi Arabia, seeking to undermine the regime through a concerted campaign of attacks on domestic as well as foreign targets.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Abdel Bari Atwan, The Secret History […]
Category: quotes
5/15/2003
As stated in “The Report of the Iraq Inquiry – Executive Summary”: “817. … -Following the resignation of Ms Clare Short, the [UK] International Development Secretary, and the adoption of UN Security Council resolution 1483 in May 2003, DFID assumed leadership of the UK’s reconstruction effort in Iraq. DFID would subsequently define, within the framework established […]
5/15/2003
“In May 2003, President Bush signed an executive order that provides oil industry companies–and only oil companies–unprecedented immunity against contractual disputes or lawsuits resulting from discrimination, labor law abuses, environmental disasters, and human rights violations. [As reported in the August 8, 2003, edition of The San Francisco Chronicle] ‘In terms of legal liability,’ says Tom […]
5/15/2003
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan wrote: “As [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz would tell Vanity Fair in May 2003, [President] Bush and his national security team ‘settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on [for invading Iraq] which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason.’ Wolfowitz went on […]
5/15/2003
“After learning of the problem [an unguarded weapons dump in Baghdad] in May 2003, an internal IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] memorandum was written alerting Washington that terrorists might be in the process of helping ‘themselves to the greatest explosives bonanza in history.’ The White House, however, ignored the warning. Thus, intent on finding the […]
5/15/2003
In May 2003, “Vanity Fair magazine questioned Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz about the reason for attacking Iraq. He said that ‘for bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue–weapons of mass destruction–because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.’ ” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – […]
5/15/2003
On May 15, 2003, Lieutenant General Jay Garner received a draft order from his replacement to run post-war Iraq, Jerry Bremer, “disbanding the Iraqi ministries of Defense and Interior, the entire Iraqi military, and all of Saddam’s body-guard and special paramilitary organizations. Garner was stunned. The de-Baathification order was dumb, but this was a disaster. […]
5/15/2003
“In May 2003, the Bush administration launched the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, an independent body with analysts from more than a dozen agencies, including the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service. That Center is supposed to share all potentially useful intelligence and collate […]
5/15/2003
“…since May 2003, when al Qaeda first launched a wave of terrorist attacks inside Saudi Arabia, the Saudi security forces have become far more cooperative with the CIA and FBI in cracking down on al Qaeda networks operating on Saudi soil. After the Riyadh bombings in that month, CIA Director George Tenet traveled to Saudi […]
5/14/2003
In an attack in Saudi Arabia on May 14, 2003, “One of the companies that was targeted was basically a U.S. executive mercenary group called Vinnell Corporation, owned by Northrop Grumman, formerly owned by President Bush Sr.’s Carlyle Group. This is a mercenary organization that trains the Saudi Arabian National Guard that is simply there […]