Then-U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote: “In December 2002, after [chief UN weapons inspector Hans] Blix and UNMOVIC [United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission] entered Iraq, we had intelligence (and this remains valid) of Saddam calling his key people working on weapons together and telling them anyone who cooperated with interviews outside of Iraq […]
Category: quotes
12/15/2002
“Senators Joe Biden [D-DE] and Chuck Hagel [R-NE] were in the [Middle East] region on a fact-finding mission and, along with the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, briefly attended the classified war game [called Internal Look, held by Central Command during December 2002]. …Biden had a concern on his mind: the biggest worry in Washington beyond […]
12/15/2002
“In 2004, the ISG [Iraq Survey Group] uncovered evidence of a meeting of over four hundred scientists chaired by Taha Ramadan, the vice president of Iraq, just before the [UN weapons] inspectors returned [in December 2002], in which he warned them of dire consequences if the inspectors found anything that interfered with the lifting of […]
12/15/2002
“The Joint Intelligence Committees said…in a report issued in December 2002: ‘…neither President [Bill] Clinton nor President Bush nor their National Security Councils put the government or the Intelligence Community on a war footing before September 11th.’ …before 9/11, bin Laden was, by our government’s definition, an international criminal, not an imminent national security threat. […]
12/15/2002
“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.] – […]
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 […]