“On January 18 [2002], [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld sent an order to the Joint Chiefs of Staff declaring that the military no longer needed to follow Geneva’s rules in their handling of Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners.” – Jane Mayer, The Dark Side, Page 123 […]
Category: quotes
1/18/2002
“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 […]
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 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 […]
1/15/2002
“By January 2002, according to an internal Treasury memorandum, $104 million in suspected terrorist assets had been frozen.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, Page 204 […]
1/15/2002
“…Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, alleged to be an al Qaeda leader, was captured in Afghanistan and transferred to the USS Bataan somewhere in the Indian Ocean in January 2002. The USS Bataan is one of as many as seventeen ships used by the United States as floating prisons, in which detainees were kept and interrogated under […]
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 […]