5/12/2003

“It took Al-Qaeda’s suicide attacks on foreigners’ compounds in Riyadh [Saudi Arabia] in May [12] 2003 to convince the Kingdom that its only salvation was relentless repression of jihadis in its ranks and rooting out Osama’s financing network. That was the very approach the United States had been urging for years.”  – Jonathan Randal, Osama, […]

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5/12/2003

Former CIA Director George Tenet wrote: “The attacks of 9/11 were not the end of anything. They were the beginning. That was the message I was getting from my Counterterrorism Center. As far as al-Qa’ida was concerned, 9/11 was just the opening shot. …Over the next several years we were able to achieve remarkable success […]

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5/12/2003

As reported in a Wall Street Journal op-ed article by former FBI Director Louis Freeh on May 20, 2003: “…not until the May [12] 2003 attacks in Riyadh did the House of Saud take seriously Al-Qaeda’s designs on the Kingdom and accept heightened cooperation with Washington.”  – Jonathan Randal, Osama, Pages 204-205 […]

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5/11/2003

By May 11, 2003, “The 75th Exploitation Task Force, a group made up of scientists and Special Forces troops, had searched nineteen of twenty-one suspected [WMD] sites and found nothing. Another sixty-eight non-WMD sites were suspected of revealing clues to the more lethal weapons, but by late May forty-five of those surveyed had come up […]

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5/11/2003

Retired Army General Jay Garner was the Director of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) from April-May 2003, before it was replaced by the Coalition Provisional Authority. “The Garner weeks were uniformly dismissed as disaster, and it was acknowledged by political commentators that Garner had been the wrong person for the job, driving […]

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5/9/2003

“President Bush delivered the commencement address to the graduating class of the University of South Carolina on May 9, 2003. …Bush used the twenty-five minute address to make his case for expanded corporate globalization in the Middle East. Freedom, the president argued, would be advanced through a regionwide area in the Middle East that would […]

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5/9/2003

“…on May 9, 2003, two Assistant U.S. Attorneys denied that any CIA interrogations [of detainees in the war on terror] were recorded when they were asked about it by District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema. CIA admissions prove that not only were the interrogations recorded, but that the tapes were not destroyed until 2005.”  – M. […]

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5/9/2003

President George W. Bush, when giving the commencement address at the University of South Carolina: “So today I want to discuss with you a great goal for this nation. We will use our influence and idealism to replace old hatreds with new hopes across the Middle East. (Applause.) A time of historic opportunity has arrived. A […]

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5/8/2003

John Gibson, Chief Executive of Halliburton Energy Service Group, said on May 8, 2003: ” ‘We hope Iraq will be the first domino and that Libya and Iran will follow. We don’t like being kept out of markets because it gives our competitors unfair advantage.’ ”  – Antonia Juhasz, The Bush Agenda, Page 147 […]

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5/8/2003

“The United States, on behalf of the Coalition forces, laid out the framework for the occupation of Iraq, including the role of the Coalition Provisional Authority [CPA], in a letter submitted to the UN Security Council on May 8, 2003. The letter stipulated that the CPA was to ‘exercise powers of government temporarily, and as […]

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