On July 19, 2006, Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan Meghan O’Sullivan stated in a memo to her boss, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley: ” ‘The current focus on drawing down coalition troops [in Iraq],’ she wrote, ‘is one of several factors suggesting that’–and here she switched to bold type–‘we are executing a […]
7/19/2006
According to a New York Times article on July 19, 2006, in Iraq, “During the first six months of 2006, the civilian death toll from sectarian violence jumped more than 77 percent, from 1,778 in January [2006] to 3,149 in June [2006]. Some 14,338 civilians died violently in Iraq in the first half of this […]
7/15/2006
“In July 2006, the number of roadside bombs directed at U.S. forces in Iraq rose to the highest monthly total of the war, galvanizing evidence that the anti-American insurgency has only strengthened since the killing of [al Qaeda in Iraq leader] Abu Musab al-Zarkawi. In July, 2,625 explosive devices were found, compared to 1,454 in […]
7/11/2006
On July 11, 2006, “The Bush Administration publicly expresses that detainees at Guantanamo and in U.S. military custody throughout the world are entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions.” – M. Cherif Bassiouni, The Institutionalization of Torture by the Bush Administration, Page xlvi […]
7/10/2006
“Until now, most of the blame for failure to track the two Saudis [9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi] has been leveled at the Central Intelligence Agency. As recently as August 2006, in his 9/11 book The Looming Tower, New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright charged [in articles in The New Yorker on July 10 […]
7/7/2006
“[A]fter the significant rejection [on June 29, 2006] by the Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld of the Bush administration’s claim that common Article 3 [of the Geneva Conventions] does not apply to detainees captured during armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and held at Guantanamo, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England issued a memo requiring […]
7/6/2006
In a July 6, 2006, interview with journalist Bob Woodward, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said: ” ‘I thought we did it just fine in Afghanistan…and I would hope that we’ll be able to do the same thing in Iraq–that is, bring together a representative group of Iraqis and find Iraq’s Hamid Karzai [post-Taliban leader […]
7/4/2006
“With each new audio recording or video fatwa, bin Laden and his second in command, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, seem to get bolder. Yet the Bush administration recently [as mentioned in The New York Times on July 4, 2006] closed the CIA’s bin Laden unit, and astonishingly, to this day the Saudi billionaire has never even […]
7/3/2006
“The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday [July 3, 2006]. The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, the officials said. …The […]
7/3/2006
“The July 4, 2006, New York Times reported that ‘the Central Intelligence Agency has closed the unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama Bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday [July 3, 2006]. The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned […]