“…U.S. officials now believe there are hundreds of Al Qaeda cadres operating in Iraq. It is not plausible that Saddam remains blind to their presence. ‘In a vicious, repressive dictatorship that exercises near-total control over its population,’ Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pointed out last August [20, 2002], ‘it’s very hard to imagine that the government […]
8/20/2002
“The death in August [16, 2002] of the notorious terrorist Abu Nidal in Baghdad provided a useful reminder that Iraq has become a state of last resort for the pariahs of the international terror community. As White House spokesman Ari Fleischer pointed out when news broke of the death [on August 20, 2002], ‘The fact […]
8/18/2002
“Despite intense interrogations and investigations, U.S. authorities have yet to identify any senior Al Qaeda leaders among the nearly 600 terrorism suspects from 43 countries in U.S. military custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials say. …Although some of the information has been helpful, officials said, the interrogations at the high-security prison camp have not provided […]
8/18/2002
In an interview with the BBC on August 18, 2002, when asked what he expected to find in Iraq, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said: ” ‘I’m not assuming at all that the Iraqis have retained weapons of mass destruction… At the same time, it would evidently be naive of me to conclude that […]
8/18/2002
On August 18, 2002, “The Los Angeles Times reported that the nearly six hundred prisoners from forty-three countries being held in U.S. military custody at Guantanamo Bay had yielded no senior Qaeda leaders whatsoever.” – Frank Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, Page 60 […]
8/17/2002
“After the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military did…discover a memo from the office of Saddam Hussein to his Mukhabarat intelligence organization, dated August 17, 2002. The letter asked the director of the Mukhabarat to be on the lookout for al-Qaeda associates who might have entered the country and to give the matter ‘extreme importance’ […]
8/16/2002
A member of the press asked President George W. Bush how he intended to convince Congress to take action: “First of all, I am aware that some very intelligent people are expressing their opinions about Saddam Hussein and Iraq. I listen carefully to what they have to say. There should be no doubt in anybody’s mind this […]
8/16/2002
“On August 16 [2002], the president [Bush] met with the NSA [National Security Agency] via secure video. The sole purpose was for [Secretary of State Colin] Powell to make his pitch about going to the UN. …Fine, Bush finally said, approving the general idea of a speech to the UN about Iraq.” – Bob Woodward, […]
8/15/2002
“In August 2002, Vice President Cheney stated that Iraq was actively developing nuclear weapons. He claims that the evidence came from Saddam’s son-in-law, who defected from Iraq in 1995. But, in fact, the defector had said the opposite- that Saddam had done no work on nuclear weapons since 1991.” [The 15th of the month for […]
8/15/2002
As stated in “The Report of the Iraq Inquiry – Executive Summary”: “523. By late August 2002, the Government was troubled by intense speculation about whether a decision had already been taken to use military force. In Mr Blair’s words, the US and UK had been ‘outed’ as having taken a decision when no such decision […]