“Classified tallies made available to The Washington Post have identified 28 of the approximately 30 names on the [CIA’s Counterterrorist Center’s] unpublished HVT [high-value targets] List. Half–14–are known to be dead or in custody. Those at large include three of the five men on the highest echelon: bin Laden, his deputy Ayman Zawahiri and operational […]
10/21/2004
Pentagon spokesman “Maj. [Michael] Shavers said military officials have confirmed reports indicating about 10 prisoners released from the naval base prison on Cuba’s southeastern tip [Guantanamo] have ‘returned to committing terrorists acts.’ ” – Guy Taylor, “Military to Keep Freeing Prisoners,” The Washington Times, Oct. 21, 2004 […]
10/20/2004
In an October 25, 2004, article titled ‘Iraq Removed from List of State Sponsors of Terrorism,’ the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Information Programs about U.S. foreign policy reported that, “The United States has officially removed Iraq from its list of state sponsors of terrorism to reflect the fundamental change in the country’s […]
10/19/2004
In a New York Times op-ed on October 19, 2004, retired Central Command leader General Tommy Franks “vehemently denied Democrat [presidential] contender John Kerry’s claim that he had let bin Laden escape [from the Tora Bora cave complex in Afghanistan]. He accused Kerry of ‘distortions of history,’ saying that ‘bin Laden was never within our […]
10/19/2004
“The hapless OHRA [Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance] administrator, Jay Garner, later conceded [in an interview for an October 19, 2004, New York Times article], ‘We did not seal the borders [of Iraq] because we did not have enough troops to do that, and that brought in terrorists.’ ” – Larry Diamond, Squandered Victory, […]
10/19/2004
While campaigning for reelection, Vice President Dick Cheney made a speech in Carroll, Ohio, on October 19, 2004. ” ‘The biggest threat we now face as a nation,’ he said, ‘is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against […]
10/19/2004
On October 19, 2004, militant Jordanian “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi publicly declared his allegiance to Bin Laden and stated that this was the result of eight months of contacts between his organization and Al Qaeda. Zarqawi’s group was now renamed Qaedat al-Jihad in Mesopotamia [Iraq].” – Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli, eds., Al Qaeda In Its […]
10/19/2004
“At a town hall meeting in Ohio on October 19 [2004], Vice President Dick Cheney said [Democratic presidential candidate John] Kerry’s critique of the Tora Bora [Afghanistan] campaign [in which Kerry claimed U.S. forces let Osama bin Laden escape] was ‘absolute garbage.’ ” – Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, Page 331 […]
10/19/2004
“Writing in The New York Times [on October 19, 2004], General Tommy Franks, a Bush supporter and the overall commander of the Tora Bora operation [in Afghanistan in December 2001], wrote, ‘We don’t know to this day whether Mr. Bin Laden was at Tora Bora.’ ” – Peter Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, […]
10/18/2004
“We have also learned in The Washington Post [on October 18, 2004] that at the same time the president [Bush] was falsely asserting to the American people that he was making sure he was providing all the equipment and supplies to the soldiers that their commanders said they needed…the top military commander in Iraq, Lieutenant […]