“After a mass killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war by the forces of an American-backed warlord during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Bush administration officials repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the episode, according to government officials and human rights organizations. …The killings occurred in late November 2001… Thousands of Taliban fighters […]
11/25/2001
American Taliban John Walker Lindh was captured, and subsequently nearly killed, by the Northern Alliance on November 25, 2001. “Lindh managed to survive…and eventually fell into the hands of the CIA and Special Forces, who proceeded to interrogate him. According to documents later unearthed by Richard Serrano of the Los Angeles Times, a Special Forces […]
11/25/2001
“In November [25, 2001], CIA officers went to interrogate Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners detained at a primitive nineteenth-century Afghan fortress, Qala-i-Jangi. A riot ensued. Using weapons smuggled onto the complex, enemy fighters killed one of our officers, Johnny ‘Mike’ Spann, making him the first American combat death in the war.” – George W. Bush, […]
11/25/2001
“Once victory in Afghanistan was ensured, [President] Bush had privately instructed [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld in late November 2001 to dust off the military’s Iraq invasion plans, which had been on the shelf with minimal updates since the 1991 Gulf War. Rumsfeld had delegated the assignment to General Tommy Franks, the CENTCOM [Central Command] […]
11/25/2001
American Taliban member John Walker Lindh was “present during a prison uprising in Afghanistan [on November 25, 2001] by Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees that resulted in the death of Capt. Johnny ‘Mike’ Spann, although there is no evidence that Lindh was responsible for Spann’s death.” – Peter Margulies, Law’s Detour, Page 47 […]
11/25/2001
John Walker “Lindh was an American who went to Pakistan and then Afghanistan to learn Islam. He joined the Taliban, although he apparently expressly rejected an offer by an Al Qaeda leader to commit terrorism in the United States. U.S. personnel captured Lindh [on November 25, 2001] after the American intervention in Afghanistan.” – Peter […]
11/25/2001
“In late November 2001 the imminent fall of the northern Afghan city of Kunduz alarmed the Pakistani military regime. Thousands of Taliban and foreign fighters had retreated to Kunduz from areas seized by the Northern Alliance. Hundreds of Pakistani military officers, ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] advisers, and foreign fighters, including Pakistani volunteers, had been trapped, raising […]
11/25/2001
“In late November [25] 2001, a group of recently captured Arab Taliban fighters at Qala Jangi [Afghanistan] used concealed weapons to kill CIA agent Johnny Spann and others and took over the facility for a week until they were subdued in one of the most brutal battles in the Afghanistan campaign.” – Jack Goldsmith, The […]
11/25/2001
“Not until November 25 [2001], seven weeks after starting the operation, did the United States insert a ground force unit (Marines) to take and hold a former al Qaeda and Taliban facility near Kandahar [Afghanistan]. The Taliban kept control of the city, however, until December 7. The late-November operation did not include any effort by U.S. […]
11/24/2001
Then-CIA Director George Tenet wrote: “After the [Afghan] city of Konduz fell on November 24 [2001], Northern Alliance forces incarcerated many hundreds of prisoners in a nineteenth-century fortress called Qala-i-Jangi. …Many of the Taliban POWs were foreigners, including at least fifty Arabs from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, and elsewhere. Also in the mix were Russians, […]