“President Saddam Hussein said the attacks on the United States were the result of America’s ‘evil policy,’ contending that the United States exports corruption and crime through its military forces and its movies. He suggested the attacks might have been carried out by Americans.” – “After The Attacks, Reaction From Around The World,” The New […]
Category: quotes
9/13/2001
In a National Security Council meeting with President Bush on September 13, 2001: “Looking beyond bin Laden and Afghanistan, [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld mentioned Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a threat to both its region and to the United States. Iraq, he observed, was a state that supported terrorism, and that might someday offer terrorists […]
9/13/2001
Recollection of the changes made to the wording of the original AUMF following 9/11. “Almost immediately some of our most seasoned members, including Senator Joe Biden of Delaware and Carl Levin of Michigan, chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee, respectively, pointed out the obvious flaws in passing a […]
9/13/2001
“Mr. bin Laden summoned Arab reporters on Wednesday [September 13, 2001] to a compound in Afghanistan to deny responsibility for the stunning [9/11] strikes while praising those who conducted them. American intelligence officials now dismiss such denials.” – Judith Miller, “Bin Laden: Child of Privilege who Champions Holy War,” The New York Times, Sep. 14, […]
9/13/2001
After a meeting with President Bush and his National Security Council on September 13, 2001, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith said: “As I left this meeting, I was struck by several points. Two days after the attacks, I noticed, [CIA director] George Tenet seemed already to have concluded that Usama bin Laden and […]
9/12/2001
“President Bush chaired two more meetings of the NSC [National Security Council] on September 12 [2001]. In the first meeting, he stressed that the United States was at war with a new and different kind of enemy. The President asked principals to go beyond their pre-9/11 work and develop a strategy to eliminate terrorists and […]
9/12/2001
At a CIA dinner on September 12, 2001, Deputy Chief of MI5 (U.K.’s counterintelligence and security agency) Eliza Manninghan-Buller said: ” ‘I hope we can all agree that we should concentrate on Afghanistan, and not launch any attacks against Iraq.’ …Their message…reflected deep concern that the Bush Administration might be subject to…the exploitation of the […]
9/12/2001
Former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke was interviewed by Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes on March 21, 2004. “Speaking of White House meetings after the 9/11 attacks [on September 12, 2001], Clarke said that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were all but lost in the shuffle: ‘[Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was saying that we […]
9/12/2001
Counterterrorism czar Richard “Clarke has written that on the evening of September 12 [2001], President Bush told him and some of his staff to explore possible Iraqi links to 9/11. ‘See if Saddam did this,’ Clarke recalls the President telling them. ‘See if he’s linked in any way.’ While he believed the details of Clarke’s […]
9/12/2001
FBI agent Ali Soufan was in Yemen, investigating the bombing of the USS Cole when 9/11 occurred. He had been requesting information from the CIA, but was not receiving it, on account of ‘the wall.’ On September 12, 2001, the CIA eventually showed him three surveillance photos of the terrorist summit held in Malaysia in […]