On September 26, 2002, “In a closed meeting with eighteen lawmakers…[President] Bush had also embraced another unfounded assertion. ‘Saddam Hussein is a terrible guy who is teaming up with al-Qaeda,’ he told the lawmakers, ignoring the lack of any hard evidence of such an alliance. One of the lawmakers asked him what would happen [in […]
Category: quotes
9/26/2002
The Downing Street Memo, a July 23, 2002, report from British intelligence, claimed Iraq had banned weapons and sought ‘significant quantities of uranium from Africa.’ “The CIA had warned the British against those claims, but [President] Bush would eventually adopt both of them. ‘According to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological […]
9/25/2002
President George W. Bush, when asked by a member of the press if Saddam was a larger threat than al Qaeda: “That’s a — that is an interesting question. I’m trying to think of something humorous to say. (Laughter.) But I can’t when I think about al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. They’re both risks, they’re both […]
9/25/2002
Tyler Drumheller, Chief of the Directorate of Operations’ European Division, met with the Washington station chief of Germany’s BND (Federal Intelligence Service) in late September 2002. He raised questions about ‘Curveball,’ the Iraqi defector who “had become the primary basis for one of the [Bush] administration’s most significant claims: that Iraq had built a fleet […]
9/25/2002
“On September 25 [2002], [National Security Advisor] Condoleezza Rice appeared on PBS’s NewsHour and said the Iraqi tyrant [Saddam Hussein] was supplying ‘training to al-Qaeda in chemical weapons development.’ ” – Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris, Page 119 […]
9/25/2002
On September 25, 2002, “President Bush actually told the country, ‘You cannot distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam.’ He also said, ‘The true threat facing our country is an al-Qaeda-type network trained and armed by Saddam.’ ” – Al Gore, The Assault on Reason, Page 108 […]
9/25/2002
” ‘You can’t distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror. They’re equally as bad. They work in concert,’ [President] Bush said on September 25, 2002.” – Vincent Bugliosi, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, Page 144 […]
9/25/2002
“As the president [Bush] declared in September [25] 2002, ‘You can’t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror. …I can’t distinguish between the two, because they’re both equally as bad, and equally as evil, and equally as destructive.’ ” – Jeffrey Record, Wanting War, Page 29 […]
9/25/2002
In an effort to prepare a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in only three weeks’ time in the fall of 2002, “the CIA frantically had to verify dubious bits of intelligence, including one questionable nugget that [CIA Director George] Tenet had indiscreetly divulged to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee […]
9/25/2002
“In late September 2002, NSA [National Security Agency] Director Michael Hayden signed off on a CIA-produced National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s WMD program that not only turned out to be wrong in almost all respects, but also served as the principal justification for the Bush administration to lead the United States to war with […]