“The Joint Intelligence Committees said…in a report issued in December 2002: ‘…neither President [Bill] Clinton nor President Bush nor their National Security Councils put the government or the Intelligence Community on a war footing before September 11th.’ …before 9/11, bin Laden was, by our government’s definition, an international criminal, not an imminent national security threat. […]
12/15/2002
“Senators Joe Biden [D-DE] and Chuck Hagel [R-NE] were in the [Middle East] region on a fact-finding mission and, along with the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, briefly attended the classified war game [called Internal Look, held by Central Command during December 2002]. …Biden had a concern on his mind: the biggest worry in Washington beyond […]
12/15/2002
“In December 2002 the CIA was asked to write an official evaluation of Iraq’s ‘Currently Accurate, Full and Complete Disclosure’ of its weapons programs–a 12,000-page document delivered to the UN inspectors as required by the Security Council’s Resolution 1441, which sent inspectors back into Iraq and started the countdown to war…Vice President Dick Cheney argued […]
12/15/2002
“The Bush administration was mapping out its postinvasion plans for Iraq’s oil in late 2002. One forum was the U.S. State Department’s Future of Iraq Project’s Oil and Energy Working Group, composed of administration officials, expatriate Iraqis, and others. Meeting four times between December 2002 and April 2003, the members of the working group agreed […]
12/15/2002
According to the ‘Report of the Joint Inquiry into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001,’ released in December 2002: “A leader of the FBI’s counterterrorism team declared he was ’98 percent certain’ that bin Laden would strike overseas. A later review found this was the ‘clear majority view’ among intelligence analysts.” [The 15th of […]
12/14/2002
On December 14, 2002, “A week after the Iraqis made their submission [of a comprehensive written declaration of their WMD program], U.S. intelligence experts revealed that they had reached the preliminary conclusion that the Iraqi declaration had failed to account for chemical and biological agents missing when the inspectors left Iraq four years previously, and […]
12/13/2002
Regarding war in Iraq, “some in the [Bush] administration, according to a report drafted by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment [on December 13, 2002], even argued that all the postwar costs, ‘the cost of the occupation, the cost for the military administration and providing for a provisional administration, all of that would come […]
12/13/2002
From the State Department’s December 13, 2002, publication titled ‘Iraq: From Fear to Freedom:’ “During 2001 and 2002, Baghdad has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes that most intelligence experts believe are intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium.” – U.S. Department of State, “Iraq: From Fear to Freedom; WMD: The […]
12/13/2002
“On December 13 [2002], in a seven-minute public announcement, President Bush said that U.S. Military personnel and other essential civilians in high-risk areas of the world would receive a smallpox vaccine. As commander in chief he too would get the vaccine. ‘The vaccinations are a precaution only and not a response to any information concerning […]
12/12/2002
“The broad dimensions of bin Laden’s establishment on the ground were known to U.S. intelligence by late 2000, but nothing could be done to address it owing to [President Bill] Clinton’s reluctance to use force. The onus was on U.S. law enforcement to prevent an attack, which was an impossible task. At the joint congressional […]