“On December 17, 2002, [General Counsel of the U.S. Navy] Alberto Mora first learned there was a problem at Guantanamo when David Brant, the head of the Navy’s criminal investigations…[informed him] ‘We think people are being abused by the interrogators in Guantanamo in unlawful ways,’…’and it seems to have been approved at a higher level.’ […]
12/15/2002
As stated in “The Report of the Iraq Inquiry – Executive Summary”: “811. … -In December 2002, the deployment of 3 Commando Brigade was identified as a way for the UK to make a valuable contribution in the initial stages of a land campaign if transit through Turkey was refused. The operational risks were not explicitly […]
12/15/2002
Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix was interviewed by CNN war correspondent Christiane Amanpour on March 17, 2004. Describing the unsuccessful search for WMD, Blix said: “part of the problem was that he himself had believed the weapons probably existed. ‘I’m not here to have gut feelings,’ he said. ‘But yes, in December 2002 […]
12/15/2002
“Last fall [2002], as the U.S. began planning the invasion of Iraq, Washington shifted many of its highly classified special-forces units and officers who had been hunting bin Laden in Afghanistan, moving them to Iraq, where they performed covert operations before the war began. By December [2002] many of the 800 special-forces personnel who had […]
12/15/2002
“In December [2002], as Saddam Hussein agreed to let the [weapons] inspectors in and said Iraq would fully comply with the [UN Security Council] resolution [1441], [President] Bush dispatched troops to the region, sending 25,000 that month and 62,000 more in early January.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – […]
12/15/2002
“In 2004, the ISG [Iraq Survey Group] uncovered evidence of a meeting of over four hundred scientists chaired by Taha Ramadan, the vice president of Iraq, just before the [UN weapons] inspectors returned [in December 2002], in which he warned them of dire consequences if the inspectors found anything that interfered with the lifting of […]
12/15/2002
Then-U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote: “In December 2002, after [chief UN weapons inspector Hans] Blix and UNMOVIC [United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission] entered Iraq, we had intelligence (and this remains valid) of Saddam calling his key people working on weapons together and telling them anyone who cooperated with interviews outside of Iraq […]
12/15/2002
According to the December 2002 Report of the Joint Inquiry into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: “The Joint Inquiry confirmed that, before September 11, the Intelligence Community produced at least twelve reports over a seven-year period suggesting that […]
12/15/2002
“In December 2002, when the bulk of the troop deployment [in Iraq] was just beginning, the president [Bush] had rejected [Vice President Dick] Cheney’s argument that Iraq’s failure to accurately declare its weapons programs was reason enough to call off the inspections and set a firm invasion date. The force was not yet ready.” [The […]
12/15/2002
“Australian special forces took part in the early stages of allied operations in Afghanistan, but most of them were withdrawn by December 2002, only to be reinforced later in August-September 2005.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Deepak Tripathi, Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan, Page 39 […]