“…the State Department knew nothing of the new interrogation rules approved by [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld and had no confirmation of mistreatment until news stories in March 2003 revealed that two Afghans had been beaten to death while in U.S. custody. Although the military had initially reported that the men had died of natural […]
Category: quotes
3/15/2003
“…to date, the only arrest of an al Qaeda terrorist in the United States that the NSA [National Security Agency] warrantless eavesdropping program supposedly was involved in was that of Iyman Faris, a thirty-eight-year-old truck driver in Columbus, Ohio, who was caught in March 2003 planning to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, in New York City. […]
3/15/2003
“Immediately after 9/11, a group calling itself Jund al-Islam (The Army of Islam) established itself in a mountainous area near the town of Halabja [in Iraqi Kurdistan]. It was clear that the group was linked to al-Qaeda. The group subsequently merged with another extremist Islamist party to form Ansar al-Islam (The Partisans of Islam). In […]
3/15/2003
Then-chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix wrote: “…in March 2003 the policy of containment was abandoned in the case of Iraq and the policy of counter-proliferation was applied: a combined UN and IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] inspection force of fewer than 200 inspectors costing perhaps $80 million per year was pushed out and replaced […]
3/15/2003
Regarding enhanced interrogation techniques: “Acutely aware that the agency would be blamed if the policies lost political support, nervous C.I.A. officials began to curb its practices much earlier than most Americans know: no one was waterboarded after March 2003, and coercive interrogation methods were shelved altogether in 2005.” [The 15th of the month used for […]
3/15/2003
“But while U.S. intelligence was busy worrying about the ring plan [that Iraqi forces would use to defend Baghdad], Saddam’s Republican Guard, and his unconventional weapons, it dismissed as minor the role of the Fedayeen [paramilitary fighters] and entirely missed the fact that tons of arms caches were distributed in March [2003] and stored in […]
3/15/2003
A 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum “says that the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Scott Shane, “Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects,” The New York […]
3/15/2003
Then-CIA Director George Tenet made a comment to President Bush regarding the possibility of a link between Iraq and al-Qa’ida: ” ‘Mr. President,’ I said one morning in March 2003, ‘the vice president [Dick Cheney] wants to make a speech about Iraq and al-Qa’ida that goes way beyond what the intelligence shows. We [CIA] cannot […]
3/15/2003
As stated in “The Report of the Iraq Inquiry – Executive Summary”: “21. In mid-March, Mr Blair’s determination to stand alongside the US left the UK with a stark choice. It could act with the US but without the support of the majority of the Security Council in taking military action if Saddam Hussein did not accept the US […]
3/15/2003
After informing President Bush in March 2003 that Vice President Dick Cheney was going to make an erroneous speech regarding the Iraq-al-Qa’ida link, then-CIA Director George Tenet said: “CIA found absolutely no linkage between Saddam and 9/11. At best, all the data in our possession suggested a plausible scenario where the ‘enemy of my enemy […]