On December 21, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy Director John McLauglin met in the Oval Office with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and presidential Chief of Staff Andrew Card. “The meeting was for presenting ‘The Case’ on [Iraq’s] WMD as it might be presented to a jury […]
12/20/2002
From the interrogation log of alleged 20th hijacker Mohammed al-Qahtani, on his 28th day of detention, December 20, 2002: ” ‘1115: Told detainee a dog is held in higher esteem. …Began teaching detainee lessons such as stay, come, and bark, to elevate his status to that of a dog. Detainee became agitated. …1300: Dog tricks […]
12/20/2002
In a separate statement from the Joint Inquiry Committee’s Final Report on 9/11 titled Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, released in December 2002, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) “named six top officials he said had ‘failed in significant ways to […]
12/19/2002
Regarding Iraq’s December 7, 2002, declaration of its weapons programs, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix wrote: “In my briefing of the [UN Security] Council on December 19 [2002], I noted that the biological section [of the declaration] was essentially a reorganized version of a declaration provided to UNSCOM [UN Special Commission on Iraq] in […]
12/19/2002
At the UN on December 19, 2002, chief UN weapons inspector Hans “Blix said ‘an opportunity was missed’ for Baghdad to come clean [on Iraq’s weapons programs], and told the Security Council in a closed briefing that there were ‘inaccuracies’ in Iraq’s claim that it had destroyed a huge stockpile of anthrax it had built […]
12/19/2002
“By December 19 [2002], [Secretary of State Colin] Powell declared that Iraq had failed to disclose the required information about its weapons programs, and hence was once again in ‘material breach’ of [UN] Security Council resolutions and ‘well on its way to losing this last chance [to avoid war].’ ” – Todd S. Purdum and […]
12/19/2002
On December 19, 2002, “the United States accused Iraq of being in ‘material breach’ of the UN resolution [#1441, which required Saddam to comply with disarmament obligations and inspections]. Through spokesmen, Saddam Hussein quickly responded by accusing the United States of making judgments before UN inspectors could fully complete their inspections. He also stated publicly […]
12/19/2002
On December 7, 2002, “Iraq submitted a 12,200 page document that purportedly itemized all its unconventional weapons. But [Secretary of State] Colin Powell rejected the document, in part because it did not account for the alleged Niger yellowcake and the aluminum tubes. To back up Powell’s statement, the State Department issued a fact sheet [on […]
12/19/2002
On December 19, 2002, Secretary of State Colin “Powell pressed ahead with his own harsh public assessment of Saddam’s deception of the world community and tepid cooperation with the [weapons] inspectors. ‘The world is still waiting for Iraq to comply with its obligations,’ he told reporters. ‘The world will not wait forever…Iraq can no longer […]
12/19/2002
“The CIA’s concerns about the Niger report had led to its excision from [President] Bush’s Cincinnati [Ohio] speech in October [7, 2002]. But by December [19, 2002] the claim had reappeared, when a State Department ‘Fact Sheet’ composed by John Bolton’s nonproliferation bureau charged that the Iraqi WMD declaration, among other things, had ‘ignore[ed] efforts […]