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 […]
Category: quotes
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 […]
3/15/2003
As stated in “The Report of the Iraq Inquiry – Executive Summary”: “271. Mr Tony Brenton, Chargé d’Affaires, British Embassy Washington, reported that President Bush was determined to remove Saddam Hussein and to stick to the US timetable for action. The UK’s ‘steadfastness’ had been ‘invaluable’ in bringing in other countries in support of action.” – Commissioned […]
3/15/2003
“A study produced by Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies [in November 2003] indicates that Israel’s vaunted intelligence services could find no indication that Iraq possessed banned weapons, despite their location and access to Middle East sources. ‘On the eve of the war [March 2003],’ said the report, ‘Israeli intelligence on Iraqi capabilities […]
3/15/2003
As stated in “The Report of the Iraq Inquiry – Executive Summary”: “473. Mr Rycroft replied to Mr Brummell on 15 March: ‘This is to confirm that it is indeed the Prime Minister’s unequivocal view that Iraq is in further material breach of its obligations, as in OP4 [operative paragraph 4] of UNSCR [United Nations Security […]
3/14/2003
Deputy Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel John “Yoo’s March [14] 2003 opinion…declared that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming, and other crimes did not apply to the military interrogators in Guantanamo. …Among the practices the memo discussed as arguably legal were gouging a prisoner’s eyes out, dousing him with ‘scalding water, corrosive acid, or […]
3/14/2003
“On April 1, 2008, nearly four years after The Washington Post first revealed the existence of the Torture Memo, the Pentagon released a March [14] 2003 memo that went further than the original 2002 memo in arguing that the wartime powers of the executive as commander in chief of the armed forces are not subject […]
3/14/2003
“On March 14 [2003], Senator Jay Rockefeller IV [D-WV], the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter to FBI chief Robert Mueller asking for an investigation because ‘the fabrication of these [Niger yellowcake] documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq.’ […]
3/14/2003
On March 14, 2003, “[Counterterrorism Adviser Rand] Beers quietly tendered his resignation, something almost unheard-of for a senior member of the National Security Council staff in a time of war. Beers recalls his thinking at the time: ‘We were taking our eye off bin Laden and we were going to pay for it, both with respect to […]
3/14/2003
On March 14, 2003, Deputy Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel John Yoo sent a memo to General Counsel William Haynes titled, ‘Military Interrogations of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside of the United States.’ It “states that the Fifth and Eighth Amendments do not hold for alien enemy combatants held outside of the U.S.; […]