“By December 17 [2001], the battle of Tora Bora [Afghanistan] was over. Dalton Fury [pseudonym], the Delta [Force] commander on the ground, estimated that at battle’s end there were some 220 dead militants and fifty-two captured fighters, who were mostly Arabs, with a dozen Afghans and a sprinkling of Chechens and Pakistanis. Around twenty of […]
12/17/2001
On December 17, 2001, “The results of a CIA-administered polygraph determine that Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a civil engineer who claimed to have helped Saddam’s men secretly bury tons of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, was lying. Al-Haideri claimed the weapons were buried in subterranean wells, hidden in private villas, and stashed beneath the Saddam […]
12/17/2001
Secretary of State Colin “Powell said on December 17, 2001, that al-Qaeda had been destroyed in Afghanistan (wrongly, it turns out) and that the country was no longer a haven for terrorists, while [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld refused to back up this comment, insisting instead on further use of military force in that country.” […]
12/17/2001
Regarding former President Bill Clinton’s casual responses to terrorist attacks, his political advisor and pollster, Dick Morris, said in a National Review article on December 17, 2001: ” ‘He had almost an allergy to using people in uniform… he was terrified of incurring casualties; the lessons of Vietnam were ingrained far too deeply in him. […]
12/16/2001
On December 16, 2001, “one week after [Vice President Dick] Cheney told [Meet the Press host Tim] Russert that the contact between [lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed] Atta and [senior Iraqi Intelligence Service official] Ahmad al Ani had been ‘pretty well confirmed,’ an unnamed intelligence official confirmed the report, telling the New York Times ‘there was […]
12/16/2001
” ‘We’ve destroyed al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and we have ended the role of Afghanistan as a haven for terrorist activity,’ Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on the NBC News program ‘Meet the Press‘ [on December 16, 2001].” – John Kifner and Eric Schmitt, “Al Qaeda Routed From Afghanistan, U.S. Officials Say,” The […]
12/15/2001
In a December 2001 interview with Bob Woodward, President Bush said, regarding decisions to go after Iraq: ” ‘I know it is hard for you to believe, but I have not doubted what we’re doing. I have not doubted what we’re doing. …There is no doubt in my mind we’re doing the right thing.’ “ […]
12/15/2001
Then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice wrote, regarding Osama bin Laden: “Some people contend that we had a chance to capture or kill him at Tora Bora [Afghanistan] in [December] 2001. In fact, there were conflicting reports about his whereabouts at the time, and as a result the military did not request additional forces to conduct […]
12/15/2001
A WikiLeaks document leaked from Guantanamo Bay included a statement by detainee Harun Shirzad al-Afghani, who told of bin Laden’s (OBL’s) escape from the Tora Bora compound in Afghanistan in December 2001. “Al-Afghani was a commander in the militant group Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, a close ally at the time of al Qaeda. Al-Afghani claims that the […]
12/15/2001
U.S. military Commander Dalton Fury (pseudonym) spoke about his pursuit of Osama bin Laden in December 2001 at Tora Bora, Afghanistan. “[A] Delta force named Jackal radioed they had Bin Laden in sight. He wrote: ‘The operation Jackal team observed 50 men moving into a cave that they hadn’t seen before. The mujahideen said they […]