“Unfortunately, the reappearance of the Taliban was ignored by the Bush White House, which had already set its sights on Iraq. So beginning in February 2002, and continuing without letup through the summer of 2002, just as Taliban guerrilla attacks were on the rise inside Afghanistan, virtually all CIA and U.S. military intelligence assets (including […]
Category: quotes
2/15/2002
“Both [incumbent Afghan President Hamid] Karzai and Kofi Annan, then the head of the United Nations, wanted to post international peacekeepers around Afghanistan in early 2002. But the Bush administration blocked any non-U.S. troops from deploying outside Kabul for the first two years of the occupation. [Ambassador to Afghanistan James] Dobbins recalls a meeting in […]
2/15/2002
Former Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), “who was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2002, wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post on November 20, 2005: ‘In February 2002…after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, General Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised […]
2/15/2002
“As of early [February] 2002, international security and intelligence agencies estimate there to be at least 300 active and dormant members of Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda associate Islamist members in Europe. Without exception they are the cream of Al Qaeda’s trained members.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – […]
2/15/2002
“Dale Watson, the FBI’s intelligence chief, stated before a Senate hearing in February 2002 that the FBI was caught off guard by the [9/11] attack because most of the nineteen hijackers entered the country close to the fateful date.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Bill Gertz, Breakdown, Page […]
2/15/2002
“When he [Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld] visited Guantánamo for the first time in February 2002, he said the United States was holding ‘the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.’ Although most of the prisoners would turn out to be innocent of any crime, Rumsfeld had already determined their guilt.” […]
2/14/2002
” ‘It doesn’t mean that an invasion [of Iraq] is imminent,’ [Secretary of State Colin] Powell told the Financial Times [on February 14, 2002]… Sanctions and support for the Iraqi opposition were still firm pillars of [Bush] administration policy, he said, and ‘if there is ever a point where we believe it’s necessary to do […]
2/13/2002
“On February 13, 2002, Knight Ridder reported that ‘President Bush has decided to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power and ordered the CIA, the Pentagon and other agencies to devise a combination of military, diplomatic and covert steps to achieve that goal.” – Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris, Page 82 […]
2/13/2002
“The next day [February 13, 2002] at a press conference the president [Bush] said of Iraq, ‘I will reserve whatever options I have, I’ll keep them close to my vest.’ “ – Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, Page 103 […]
2/13/2002
In an op-ed piece he wrote that appeared in The Washington Post on February 13, 2002, former Assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Ken Adelman, wrote: “Hussein constitutes the number one threat against American security and civilization. Unlike Osama bin Laden, he has billions in government funds, scores of government research labs working feverishly […]