In an article on July 20, 2002, former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter wrote: ” ‘I bear personal witness through seven years as a chief weapons inspector in Iraq for the United Nations to both the scope of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs and the effectiveness of the U.N. weapons inspectors in ultimately eliminating […]
Category: quotes
7/19/2002
To provide the basis for a discussion with the US, a [UK] Cabinet Office paper of 19 July [2002], ‘Iraq: Conditions for Military Action’, identified the conditions which would be necessary before military action would be justified and the UK could participate in such action. – House of Commons, The Report of the Iraq Inquiry […]
7/17/2002
According to former CIA Agent John Kiriakou: “the CIA believed in 2002 that [al Qaeda operations chief Abu] Zubaydah was withholding ‘imminent threat information’ during his initial interrogation. In mid-May 2002, agency lawyers met with their counterparts at the National Security Council (NSC) and Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to discuss a possible new […]
7/15/2002
In July 2002, “…two days before [American Taliban member John Walker] Lindh’s lawyers planned to challenge the legitimacy of his FBI confession in court…the prosecutors offered them a surprise deal. …the Justice Department had dropped nine out of ten counts against Lindh. ‘The Defense Department was really worried about the claims of mistreatment,’ said [Lindh’s […]
7/15/2002
In a July 2002 meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cabinet, “Sir Richard Dearlove, the director of MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, reported that his visit to Washington had convinced him that the [Bush] administration’s decision to invade Iraq was inevitable but that there seemed to be little deliberation among the Americans of […]
7/15/2002
“Richard Haass, the former director of policy planning at the State Department, has said that [National Security Advisor] Condi Rice told him in July of 2002 that ‘the decisions were made, and unless Iraq gave in to all our demands, war was a foregone conclusion.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting […]
7/15/2002
As a buildup before the invasion of Iraq, “In the summer of [July] 2002, [President] Bush approved $700 million worth of ‘preparatory tasks’ in the Persian Gulf region such as upgrading airfields, bases, fuel pipelines and munitions storage depots to accommodate a massive U.S. troop deployment. The Bush administration funded the projects from a supplemental […]
7/15/2002
“In July 2002, [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: ‘Sure.’ In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director [George] Tenet) found an absence of ‘compelling evidence demonstrating direct […]
7/15/2002
“[I]n July 2002, President Bush signed a top-secret order directing the national security community, including the NSA [National Security Agency], to develop, for the first time, rules and policies governing how the United States would launch cyberattacks against foreign computer networks. Known as National Security Presidential Directive 16, the order allows the president to launch […]
7/15/2002
“…a manifesto entitled ‘The Declaration of the Shi’a of Iraq,’ issued in July 2002… was written by [Iraqi statesmen] Mowaffaq al-Rubai’e, Ali Allawi and Sahib al-Hakim. The Declaration drew in a wide range of participants from academic, professional, religious, tribal and military backgrounds. Over 400 Iraqi Shi’a opinion leaders in exile signed it. The Declaration […]