“Bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora [in Afghanistan in December 2001] was a touchy subject, a deflating counter to all the brave talk of ‘dead or alive’ that had launched the war on terror. [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld’s solution was to cast doubt on the possibility that bin Laden had been there at all, […]
Category: quotes
4/17/2002
“Until April 2002, [President] Bush was firmly committed to ‘no nation building’ in Afghanistan. Then, on April 17 [2002], in a speech given at the Virginia Military Institute…Bush surprised everyone by calling for a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Afghanistan, referring to the plan the United States provided Europe after World War II. Bush promised to rebuild […]
4/16/2002
“On April 16, 2002, Walter Pincus in The Washington Post reported Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as saying about [weapons] inspectors [in Iraq] that ‘for the most part anything they found was a result of having been cued to something as a result of a defector giving them a heads-up.’ “ – Hans Blix, Disarming […]
4/15/2002
FBI Director “Robert Mueller, in a public speech in April 2002, recognized the intelligence shortcomings of the FBI and said steps were being taken to improve intelligence analysis. …’Our analysts do some great work, but we need more of them and we need to do more of the kind of strategic thinking that helps us […]
4/15/2002
After seeing how CIA agents handled the interrogation of Al Qaeda operations chief Abu Zubayda in April 2002, “The FBI agents, with their traditions of working within the U.S. criminal legal framework, were appalled. …reports of deliberate prisoner abuse reached the top rungs of the FBI, causing the Director, [Robert] Mueller, to bar the Bureau’s […]
4/15/2002
In April 2002, “CIA case officers stationed all over Europe were ordered to attend a special conference in Rome, during which officials from the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group casually told the assembled CIA officers that Iraq had been on the Bush agenda from the very beginning. ‘They said this was on Bush’s agenda when he […]
4/15/2002
“By the following April [2002], the ICC [International Criminal Court] had received more than the required sixty government ratifications [needed to go into effect], and the court was launched over U.S. objections. In response, the Bush administration restated its opposition to the treaty, adding that the treaty would not proceed to the Senate for ratification. […]
4/15/2002
“In April [2002], the Near East Bureau launched a project it called the ‘Future of Iraq,’ enlisting two hundred Iraqi academics, business leaders and experts in everything from education and oil policy to governance and national security to draw up a blueprint for reconstructing and running their country after Saddam was gone. The idea had […]
4/15/2002
In April 2002, President “Bush had invited [U.K. Prime Minister Tony] Blair to spend a weekend at his ranch in Crawford [Texas]. …’The U.K. would support military action to bring about regime change [in Iraq],’ Blair agreed, ‘provided that certain conditions were met,’ according to a secret British government record of the meeting. The conditions […]
4/15/2002
In April 2002, the State Department “set in motion a series of meetings and working groups made up of Iraqi exiles, which examined various aspects of Iraq’s society and economy, and prepared a number of policy prescriptions for a possible new government in Iraq. Technical groups were organised around a number of thematic issues, including […]