On July 16, 2003, “In his first news conference after being sworn in as [General Tommy] Franks’s replacement [as head of Central Command], [General John] Abizaid summed up the situation in Iraq, as he saw it. ‘I believe there’s midlevel Baathist, Iraqi intelligence service people, Special Security Operation people, Special Republican Guard people that have […]
7/15/2003
“In July 2003, [Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) leader L. Paul] Bremer announced a new program for the CPA called ‘Achieving the Vision to Restore Full Sovereignty to the Iraqi People.’ The document listed as the primary goal the ‘early restoration of full sovereignty to the Iraqi people’ and added that the CPA ‘will not leave […]
7/15/2003
“A former Iraqi intelligence officer who was said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told American interrogators the meeting never happened, according to United States officials familiar with classified intelligence reports on the matter. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the former intelligence officer, was taken into custody by […]
7/15/2003
"By mid-July [2003], only ten nations had deployed to Iraq. In addition to the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and Poland, which had participated in the invasion, there were also Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Denmark, and South Korea." [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Ricardo S. Sanchez with Donald […]
7/15/2003
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, then-Commander of the ground forces in Iraq, wrote: "In July 2003, there were three different wars going on in Iraq. First, Saddam Hussein's former regime was staging a disorganized, decentralized insurgency against coalition forces. They were mainly interested in fighting Americans. Second, Sunni extremists were, at times, rising up and attacking […]
7/15/2003
“In July 2003, [Iraqi theologian and political leader] Moqtada [al-Sadr] paid his first visit to Sadr City [a suburb of Baghdad] since the fall of the Ba’athist regime. Ecstatic crowds numbering tens of thousands, and carrying tribal and Iraqi banners, met him. Meanwhile, his stalwarts had seized all the main mosques and meeting halls in […]
7/15/2003
“[T]he Bush administration, desperately trying to find a way to include the Niger reference in Bush’s January 28, 2003, State of the Union address, finally found it by simply quoting and embracing a British intelligence report on September 24, 2002, that Hussein was trying to buy uranium from Niger, a report that the CIA warned […]
7/15/2003
“Since September 11th, Pakistan has been rescued from the verge of bankruptcy. The United States lifted economic sanctions that were imposed in 1998, after Pakistan began testing nuclear weapons, and it restored foreign aid, last month [July 2003] promising a five-year package of three billion dollars in return for Pakistan’s continued help in the fight […]
7/15/2003
“A July 2003 poll of Baghdad residents–who represented a quarter of the Iraqi national population–by the London Spectator showed that while 23 percent believed the reason for the Anglo-American war on Iraq was ‘to liberate us from dictatorship,’ twice as many responded, ‘to get oil.’ “ [The 15th of the month used for date sorting […]
7/15/2003
In Iraq, “At the CIA’s Baghdad station, a young and relatively inexperienced station chief took over in July 2003. …The station chief specifically asked…headquarters for written guidelines on how to conduct detainee interrogations, but none were forthcoming. …[CIA Director George] Tenet’s deputies didn’t deliver the sought-after interrogation guidelines until after the Abu Ghraib [prison] scandal […]