Widows of 9/11 victims known as the ‘Jersey Girls’ pressured Washington for a new independent commission to investigate the events of 9/11. Their actions resulted in a bill known as “H.R. 4628, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003. That bill, signed reluctantly into law by President Bush on November 27, 2002, authorized what […]
11/27/2002
“On November 27, 2002, thanks mostly to pressure on the White House from the 9/11 families and [Senator John] McCain [R-AZ], [President] Bush reluctantly signed the bill creating the 9/11 commission. The bill was not what [Senate Majority Leader Tom] Daschle [D-SD], McCain, and the families had wanted. It provided the commission with an insultingly […]
11/26/2002
“On November 26 [2002], the day before the new team of UN weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix entered Iraq, General Tommy Franks, the head of Central Command, sent [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld a request to begin deploying 300,000 troops to the Gulf.” – Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris, Page 158 […]
11/25/2002
In late November 2002, “a special agent from the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, working counterintelligence operations in the French port of Marseilles, had received a phone call from a West African businessman. The caller said 20 barrels of Niger yellowcake were in a warehouse in Cotonou awaiting shipment to Iraq. The Navy report ultimately […]
11/25/2002
“In November [25] 2002 President George W. Bush signed into law the Homeland Security Act. This act authorized the most comprehensive federal government reorganization in almost sixty years. It combined dozens of agencies and offices staffed by approximately 169,000 employees into a new cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security.” – Ian S. Lustick, Trapped in the […]
11/25/2002
British House of Commons leader Robin Cook wrote in his diary on November 25, 2002: “The new Bush Administration did not select Iraq for a victorious campaign because they really believed Saddam was a threat, but because they knew he was weak. Ironically, what had rendered him weak was the very policy of containment which […]
11/25/2002
According to Army Major General James ‘Spider’ Marks: “Beginning in late November 2002, when Saddam permitted the United Nations weapons inspection team headed by Swedish lawyer Hans Blix back into Iraq, Marks noticed suspicious activity in a number of new satellite photos. U.N. inspectors were seen coming in the front gate of a suspected WMD […]
11/25/2002
“Between late November [2002] and mid-March 2003, [chief UN weapons inspector Hans] Blix reports, the UN inspectors made seven hundred separate visits to five hundred sites [in Iraq]. About three dozen of those sites had been suggested by intelligence services, many by [George] Tenet’s CIA, which insisted that these were ‘the best’ in the agency’s […]
11/24/2002
On November 24, 2002, “A chilling message from Osama bin Laden issued a direct threat to the West. ‘Anyone who tries to destroy our villages and cities, then we are going to destroy their villages and cities. Anyone who steals our fortunes, then we must destroy their economy. Anyone who kills our civilians, then we […]
11/24/2002
On November 24, 2002, Osama bin Laden commented on the 9/11 attack. “The very first reason he gave for the attack was our support of Israel in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. …Two other reasons were our having American troops stationed in…certain areas of Saudi Arabia considered to be sacred places by Muslims, and our stealing […]