“[T]he [U.K.] Prime Minister [Tony Blair] gave his unequivocal view in writing on 15 March [2003] that the requirements of Resolution 1441 [which gave Saddam a final opportunity to comply with disarmament of WMD] were being breached.” – Clare Short, An Honourable Deception?, Page 254 […]
3/15/2003
“A study produced by Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies [in November 2003] indicates that Israel’s vaunted intelligence services could find no indication that Iraq possessed banned weapons, despite their location and access to Middle East sources. ‘On the eve of the war [March 2003],’ said the report, ‘Israeli intelligence on Iraqi capabilities […]
3/15/2003
After informing President Bush in March 2003 that Vice President Dick Cheney was going to make an erroneous speech regarding the Iraq-al-Qa’ida link, then-CIA Director George Tenet said: “CIA found absolutely no linkage between Saddam and 9/11. At best, all the data in our possession suggested a plausible scenario where the ‘enemy of my enemy […]
3/15/2003
Then-CIA Director George Tenet made a comment to President Bush regarding the possibility of a link between Iraq and al-Qa’ida: ” ‘Mr. President,’ I said one morning in March 2003, ‘the vice president [Dick Cheney] wants to make a speech about Iraq and al-Qa’ida that goes way beyond what the intelligence shows. We [CIA] cannot […]
3/15/2003
“But while U.S. intelligence was busy worrying about the ring plan [that Iraqi forces would use to defend Baghdad], Saddam’s Republican Guard, and his unconventional weapons, it dismissed as minor the role of the Fedayeen [paramilitary fighters] and entirely missed the fact that tons of arms caches were distributed in March [2003] and stored in […]
3/14/2003
As stated in “The Report of the Iraq Inquiry – Executive Summary”: “472. Mr David Brummell (Legal Secretary to the Law Officers) wrote to MrMatthew Rycroft (Mr Blair’s Private Secretary for Foreign Affairs) on 14 March: ‘It is an essential part of the legal basis for military action without a further resolution of the Security Council […]
3/14/2003
As stated in “The Report of the Iraq Inquiry – Executive Summary”: “President Chirac told Mr Blair on 14 March that France was ‘content to proceed *in the logic of UNSCR 1441*: but it could not accept an ultimatum or any *automaticity’ of recourse to force’. He proposed looking at a new resolution in line with […]
3/14/2003
As stated in “The Report of the Iraq Inquiry – Executive Summary”: “810. … -Mr Brummell wrote to Mr Rycroft on 14 March: ‘It is an essential part of the legal basis for military action without a further resolution of the Security Council that there is strong evidence that Iraq has failed to comply with and […]
3/14/2003
Deputy Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel John Yoo’s “March 14, 2003 memorandum essentially states that the President [Bush] is free to override any international treaty in order to conduct his war on terror. It also goes to great lengths to argue that any U.S. law forbidding harsh or torturous techniques would not apply […]
3/14/2003
On March 14, 2003, Deputy Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel John Yoo sent a memo to General Counsel William Haynes titled, ‘Military Interrogations of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside of the United States.’ It “states that the Fifth and Eighth Amendments do not hold for alien enemy combatants held outside of the U.S.; […]