“In December [2002], as Saddam Hussein agreed to let the [weapons] inspectors in and said Iraq would fully comply with the [UN Security Council] resolution [1441], [President] Bush dispatched troops to the region, sending 25,000 that month and 62,000 more in early January.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – […]
Category: quotes
12/15/2002
According to the Joint Inquiry Committee’s Final Report, issued in December 2002, CIA Director George Tenet said: ” ‘In hindsight, I wish I had said, *Let’s take the whole [al Qaeda] enterprise down* and put five hundred more people there sooner.’ …’We never had enough officers from the Directorate of Operations,’ recalled one former chief […]
12/15/2002
“Last fall [2002], as the U.S. began planning the invasion of Iraq, Washington shifted many of its highly classified special-forces units and officers who had been hunting bin Laden in Afghanistan, moving them to Iraq, where they performed covert operations before the war began. By December [2002] many of the 800 special-forces personnel who had […]
12/15/2002
Excerpts from CIA Counterterrorist Center Director Cofer Black which appeared in the Joint Inquiry Committee’s Final Report, completed December 2002, said: “Despite several years of effort the CIA had been unable to recruit a single agent inside the core al Qaeda leadership. Black knew that the CIA was in trouble ‘without penetrations of [the] UBL […]
12/15/2002
Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix was interviewed by CNN war correspondent Christiane Amanpour on March 17, 2004. Describing the unsuccessful search for WMD, Blix said: “part of the problem was that he himself had believed the weapons probably existed. ‘I’m not here to have gut feelings,’ he said. ‘But yes, in December 2002 […]
12/14/2002
On December 14, 2002, “A week after the Iraqis made their submission [of a comprehensive written declaration of their WMD program], U.S. intelligence experts revealed that they had reached the preliminary conclusion that the Iraqi declaration had failed to account for chemical and biological agents missing when the inspectors left Iraq four years previously, and […]
12/13/2002
“On December 13 [2002], in a seven-minute public announcement, President Bush said that U.S. Military personnel and other essential civilians in high-risk areas of the world would receive a smallpox vaccine. As commander in chief he too would get the vaccine. ‘The vaccinations are a precaution only and not a response to any information concerning […]
12/13/2002
From the State Department’s December 13, 2002, publication titled ‘Iraq: From Fear to Freedom:’ “During 2001 and 2002, Baghdad has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes that most intelligence experts believe are intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium.” – U.S. Department of State, “Iraq: From Fear to Freedom; WMD: The […]
12/13/2002
Regarding war in Iraq, “some in the [Bush] administration, according to a report drafted by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment [on December 13, 2002], even argued that all the postwar costs, ‘the cost of the occupation, the cost for the military administration and providing for a provisional administration, all of that would come […]
12/12/2002
“The CIA reported in December 2002 that Ansar [al Islam] extremists had obtained VX nerve gas from the Iraqi regime. The report was first disclosed by Barton Gellman in the Washington Post on December 12 [2002]: ‘The Bush administration has received a credible report that Islamic extremists affiliated with al Qaeda took possession of a […]