According to The Daily Telegraph on March 4, 2002: ” ‘Saddam must go,’ [former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher] declared in her indomitable fashion. ‘His continued survival after comprehensively losing the Gulf War has done untold damage to the West’s standing in a region where the only unforgivable sin is weakness. His flouting of the […]
3/4/2002
“…it wasn’t until March 4, 2002, five months after the war [in Afghanistan] commenced, that American soldiers started fighting in a normal, military way. This, from the March 5, 2002, edition of the New York Times: ‘In some of the fiercest fighting of the five-month war in Afghanistan, American ground forces took the lead in […]
3/3/2002
“One of the scientists [arrested in Pakistan who had been in contact with Osama bin Laden] was Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a former chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and an open admirer of the Taliban. Mahmood had met twice with bin Laden, who grilled him on how to build a bomb. Mahmood was an […]
3/3/2002
“Interviewed at a Commonwealth Conference in Australia on 3 March 2002, [U.K. Prime Minister Tony] Blair insisted that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and was capable of using them. Blair indicated that there was a case for dealing with Iraq as a matter of urgency. Asked if this meant war was imminent […]
3/2/2002
“Operation Anaconda was supposed to have been a two-day operation using a reinforced brigade of 1,500 troops drawn from the Tenth Mountain Division and the 101st Airborne division. At the time the operation was being planned, [Commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan Major General Franklin] Hagenbeck’s staff thought there were only 150 to 200 al […]
3/1/2002
“On March 1 [2002], the State Department weighed in with another cable, this one headed ‘Sale of Niger Uranium to Iraq Unlikely.’ Citing ‘unequivocal’ control of the mines, the cable asserted that President [Mamadou] Tanja of Niger would not want to risk good relations with the United States by trading with Iraq, and cited the […]
2/28/2002
After Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf took steps to reduce the threat of terrorism, “By the end of February 2002 a total of 2,010 members of Islamist groups had been arrested and 624 offices sealed.” [The 28th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Rohan Gunaratna, Inside al Qaeda, Page 217 […]
2/28/2002
“On Thursday, February 28 [2002], [Central Command leader General Tommy] Franks arrived at [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld’s office at the Pentagon bearing two Manhattan-telephone-book-sized Top Secret binders of nearly 4,000 possible targets in Iraq…Identifying targets for a US air campaign was a leap forward from the abstract war planning of the past few months.” […]
2/27/2002
On February 27, 2002, Central Command leader General Tommy R. Franks said to the Senate Armed Services Committee: ” ‘The Central [Persian Gulf] Region is of vital interest to our country and our allies. Sixty-eight percent of the world’s proven oil reserves are found in the Gulf Region, and 43 percent of the world’s petroleum […]
2/27/2002
According to a Gallup poll conducted on February 27, 2002: “In a survey of nine Muslim countries containing about half of the world’s Muslim population the poll found half of the people questioned had unfavorable opinions of the United States, while a quarter had favorable opinions. Of those surveyed, two-thirds saw the September 11 attacks […]