“In October 2002, the Pew Research Center for People and the Press took a survey and found that 66 percent of Americans said they believed Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks, despite the lack of proof. …79 percent believed that Iraq currently possessed–or was close to possessing–nuclear weapons. Three months later, a Knight-Ridder […]
10/15/2002
“The Joint Staff effectively stated that view [that a prospective invasion of Iraq was no longer a matter of debate] in the form of a Strategic Guidance for Combatant Commanders. In mid-October [2002] a draft of this guidance was sent out to planning officers on the staffs of the senior U.S. military commanders around the […]
10/15/2002
“Until he retired in October 2002, Gregory Thielmann was in charge of military assessments within the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He said the makeup of the intelligence unit [the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, headed by neoconservative scholar David Wurmser] was a giveaway, indicating that they had no interest in true analysis. Like […]
10/15/2002
“At the October 15 [2002] Principals Committee meeting, [CIA Director] George Tenet reiterated that the CIA did not have ‘a smoking gun today [in Iraq]–a site that we know will produce a smoking gun.’ Though CIA officials lacked specific data on where Saddam’s chemical or biological weapons were located, they said they were certain, from […]
10/15/2002
“In their effort to win over the Turks [to allow the U.S. to stage a northern front for an Iraq invasion from Turkish soil], the Bush administration had offered the Turks billions. An October [2002] meeting chaired by [National Security Advisor] Condoleezza Rice had settled on a package of $3 billion in aid, $3 billion […]
10/15/2002
“A study conducted by the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform requested by Congressman Henry Waxman [D-CA], found that by October 2002, President Bush, Vice President [Dick] Cheney, Secretary [of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld, Secretary [of State Colin] Powell, and National Security Advisor [Condoleezza] Rice had made nearly a hundred misleading or inflated statements about […]
10/14/2002
Speaking at the Thaddeus McCotter for Congress Dinner, President George W. Bush stated: “Military option is my last choice. It’s not my — it’s the last thing I want to do, is commit our military. My first choice is for Saddam Hussein to do what he said he would do, and after 11 years, disarm. I […]
10/14/2002
A member of the press inquired of President George W. Bush if there would be a change in the policy on Iraq since al Qaeda had reconstituted itself: “Yes. Well, first, I — we’re making great progress in the war against terror. But as I told our citizens, and have been repeatedly telling our citizens, this […]
10/14/2002
“The vision laid out in the [President] Bush document [the National Security Strategy of the United States, written on September 17, 2002, which said we must prevent other nations from ‘surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States’] is a vision of what used to be called, when we believed it to be the […]
10/13/2002
An article in The San Jose Mercury News on October 13, 2002, written by former U.S. ambassador Joe Wilson “argued that [President] Bush was being confrontational, wrapping his obvious smash-Saddam desires within a thin argument on WMDs, and that the United Nations was not taking a hard enough line on a dictator who had flouted […]