“On January 18, 2002, the President [Bush] decided that neither al Qaeda nor Taliban fighters would receive POW [prisoner of war] status under the Geneva Conventions. According to a leaked State Department memo, Secretary of State Colin Powell asked President Bush to reconsider this decision. Powell wanted not just the Taliban covered, but al Qaeda […]
Category: quotes
1/18/2002
On January 18, 2002, Chief Legal Advisor to the Department of State William H. Taft “was informed that the president [Bush] had approved the Justice Department interpretation [of the Geneva Conventions], determining that neither al-Qaeda nor Taliban detainees were covered by the Geneva Conventions and that neither group was eligible for POW [prisoner of war] […]
1/16/2002
January 16, 2002, sees the “first arrival of 20 prisoners to camp X-ray, Guantanamo Bay. Photos are circulated showing prisoners shackled and bound, in orange jump suits, with outdoor 8×8 foot cages for housing.” – M. Cherif Bassiouni, The Institutionalization of Torture by the Bush Administration, Page xxxiv […]
1/16/2002
President George W. Bush, when asked if Iraq would be discussed by himself and the Turkish Prime Minister: “Well, I’m going to have a discussion with the Prime Minister about Iraq. And my expectations, most importantly, are not from Turkey, are from Iraq. I expect Saddam Hussein to let inspectors back into the country. We want […]
1/15/2002
In mid-January 2002, “SIGINT [signals intelligence] reporting coming out of NSA [National Security Agency] revealed that a relatively small number of Taliban military commanders had returned to Afghanistan [from Pakistan] and were operating along the Afghan-Pakistani border. The intercepts showed that the Taliban had reestablished a crude but effective communications system using satellite telephones, which […]
1/15/2002
“By January 2002, the Afghan war had cost just $3.8 billion–peanuts compared with the staggering sums to be spent later in Iraq.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Ahmed Rashid, Descent Into Chaos, Page 97 […]
1/15/2002
Director of the DARPA Information Awareness Office, Admiral John Poindexter wrote: “In January 2002 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is part of the Defense Department, established an Information Awareness Office to focus on technologies to help counter terrorism. We established a new research and development program, now called the Terrorism Information Awareness program, […]
1/15/2002
“…in January of 2002, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz actually directed the under secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, to set up an operation within his office that would serve as a de facto intelligence unit, independent of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies, to prove an Iraq-Al Qaeda relationship. The fact that […]
1/15/2002
“By January 2002, the U.S. military had established a prison camp at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the ‘illegal enemy combatants’ it was capturing in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The White House lawyers had picked the location because of its unique legal status. Leased in perpetuity to the United States by the pre-Castro […]
1/15/2002
According to a January 15, 2002, interview with former U.S. Special Envoy to the Afghan resistance, Edmund McWilliams: “…As the Soviet Union soldiers pulled out [following their invasion of Afghanistan], [Afghan warlord Gulbuddin] Hekmatyar and ISI [Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence] had embarked on a concerted, clandestine plan to eliminate his rivals and establish his Muslim Brotherhood-dominated […]