“In 1997, a group of conservative thinkers, including a preponderance of former Reagan and Bush administration officials, founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Its first letter, written on January 26, 1998, called on President [Bill] Clinton to use military force to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein. The letter states that it […]
Category: quotes
1/26/1998
On January 26, 1998, the Project for the New American Century “released an open letter to President [Bill] Clinton, calling for removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. The letter argued that diplomacy had failed and military engagement was required. In particular, it focused on the threat Hussein posed to ‘a significant portion of the […]
1/26/1998
“On January 26, 1998, a Washington, D.C. think tank called the Project for the New American Century published an open letter to President [Bill] Clinton signed by eighteen individuals, mostly former U.S. national security officials, declaring that the ‘current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding.’ Observing that ‘ *containment* of Saddam Hussein has been […]
1/26/1998
“Despite the intelligence community’s dim view of Hussein as a serious and immediate threat to the U.S., a small group of hardcore neoconservatives in [January 26] 1998 lobbied the Clinton administration to support regime change in Iraq–by force if necessary. The group…sent Clinton a letter urging his administration to implement ‘a strategy for removing Saddam’s […]
1/15/1998
British House of Commons leader Robin Cook recalled: “I had seen a minute of January 1998 to [U.K. Prime Minister] Tony Blair from John Holmes, his then international Private Secretary, written during the confrontation with Iraq over weapons inspections, which reminded the Prime Minister that he had already assured President [Bill] Clinton, ‘If a Resolution […]
1/15/1998
CIA Director George Tenet provided a written statement for the 9/11 Commission on March 24, 2004. He wrote: “I placed terrorism prominently in every annual public testimony since 1997 to the appropriate Congressional Committees on the Worldwide Threat, as shown in a series of excerpts from my Statements for the Record. …January 1998: ‘Mr. Chairman, […]
1/9/1998
On January 9, 1998, chief assistant in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, Mary Jo White, “formally unsealed an indictment naming… [senior al Qaeda operative] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as [World Trade Center bomber Ramzi] Yousef’s coconspirator. The price on his head was $2 million.” – Peter Lance, 1000 Years For […]
1/8/1998
On January 8, 1998, World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef spoke in court in his own defense before being sentenced to prison. “The West, says Yousef, was the first to kill innocent people and introduce terrorism into human history when America dropped an atomic bomb ‘which killed tens of thousands of women and children in […]
1/8/1998
On January 8, 1998, regarding al Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: “Nearly three years after his 1995 escape from the Su Casa guesthouse in Islamabad [Pakistan], and two years after the FBI helped [World Trade Center bomber Ramzi] Yousef contact him–only to lose him again in Doha, Qatar–the Feds were finally alerting the world that […]
1/8/1998
On January 8, 1998, “Calling [World Trade Center bomber Ramzi] Yousef ‘an apostle of evil,’ Judge [Kevin T.] Duffy sentences him to 240 years in solitary–one year for the combined ages of his WTC victims. Defiant to the end, the bomb maker says, ‘I am a terrorist and I am proud of it.’ ” – […]