“The post 9/11 revaluation of the U.S.-Saudi alliance has precipitated a highly ironic outcome: bin Laden’s call for the withdrawal of American troops from Saudi Arabia has since been echoed by American officials. …That same month [January 27, 2002] President Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., told CNN that the United States was […]
1/25/2002
“In late January 2002 he [Afghan President Hamid Karzai] sent foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah to Washington with a strong warning, asking the Americans to stop Pakistan from helping the Taliban regroup. Abdullah said, ‘I know that the Taliban leaders are in Pakistan. Pakistan should take this opportunity to clean its house because those elements who […]
1/25/2002
“The White House Counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales…sent a now-infamous memo to [President] Bush on January 25, 2002, stating, ‘The war against terrorism is a new kind of war. …In my judgment this new paradigm renders obsolete [the] Geneva [Conventions]‘s strict limitations on questioning enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.’ He argued that […]
1/25/2002
Regarding the Justice Department’s recent decision not to protect prisoners of the war on terror under Geneva Conventions, Secretary of State Colin Powell sent a memo to presidential Counsel Alberto Gonzales and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on January 25, 2002. “Not only was it legally indefensible, he wrote, ‘it will reverse over a century […]
1/25/2002
“According to a leaked draft of a memo to the President [Bush] dated January 25, 2002, [presidential Counsel Alberto] Gonzales took the position that the nature of the al Qaeda threat rendered ‘obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on [the] questioning of enemy prisoners, in addition to its requirements that captured fighters receive commissary privileges, pay, athletic […]
1/25/2002
In his memorandum to President Bush on January 25, 2002, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales argued that “the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War (GPW) should not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda and the Taliban. …the President should rule that Geneva does not apply in order to ‘[s]ubstantially reduce the threat of domestic […]
1/25/2002
Secretary of State Colin “Powell made a last-ditch effort, calling [National Security Advisor Condoleezza] Rice on January 25, 2002, and insisting that they couldn’t do this [nullify the Geneva Conventions], that he had to see the President [Bush] in person about it. His office was already inundated with cables from allied countries in shock that […]
1/25/2002
Secretary of State Colin “Powell [argued] that the Geneva Conventions should apply to al Qaeda and the Taliban. In a January 25 [2002] memo to [presidential counsel Alberto] Gonzales, he contended that the no-holds-barred approach would ‘reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice…and undermine the protections of the law of war for our […]
1/24/2002
Central Command leader General Tommy Franks “immediately codified the lifting of the [Geneva] conventions [from protecting Taliban and al-Qaeda individuals] by sending out his own memorandum on January 24, 2002, entitled ‘Guidance for PUC (Persons Under U.S. Control) handling,’ which read: ‘The United States has determined that al-Qaeda and Taliban individuals under the control of […]
1/23/2002
“On January 23, 2002, Daniel Pearl, an American correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, disappeared in Karachi [Pakistan]. Pearl, thirty-eight, was chasing a story about [shoe bomber] Richard Reid… Reid had been inspired by a small Pakistani extremist group whom Pearl was now trying to track down. Instead, Pearl was lured into a trap by […]