“A National Security Council meeting in the White House Situation Room was just finishing on Wednesday, November 21, 2001. ‘I need to see you,’ the president [Bush] said to [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld… ‘What kind of a war plan do you have for Iraq? How do feel about the war plan for Iraq?’ “ […]
11/21/2001
” ‘Let’s get started on this,’ [President] Bush recalled saying [to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, regarding the drafting of war plans for Iraq in a National Security Council meeting on November 21, 2001]. ‘And get [Central Command leader General] Tommy Franks looking at what it would take to protect America by removing Saddam Hussein […]
11/20/2001
After the CIA was briefed by Italian intelligence about the possible sale of yellowcake uranium from Niger to Iraq, “the State Department directed the U.S. embassy in Niger to check out the alleged uranium deal. On November 20, 2001, the U.S. embassy in Niamey, the capital of Niger, disseminated a cable reporting on a meeting […]
11/19/2001
“Stanley Bedington, a senior analyst in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center until 1994, said in an interview [on November 19, 2001], ‘The Iraqis were active in Sudan giving bin Laden assistance. A colleague of mine was chief of operations for Africa and knew it extremely well. He said the relationship between Sudan and the Iraqis was […]
11/18/2001
“On November 18 [2001], one thousand Taliban in one hundred pickup trucks drove up through the rough mountainous road from Kandahar [Afghanistan] toward Tarin Kot. On the last ridge…they were hit by precision bombs from U.S. aircraft guided by U.S. SOF [Special Operations Forces] spotters. At least thirty vehicles were destroyed. The rest fled back […]
11/18/2001
“The United States has concluded that North Korea, Iraq and at least three other countries are developing germ weapons, and has decided to accuse them of violating a treaty they ratified banning such weapons, [Bush] administration officials said this weekend [November 16-18, 2001]. The others to be cited include Iran, Libya and Syria.” – Judith […]
11/17/2001
In a New York Times article on November 17, 2001, “reporter James Risen quoted ‘a senior American law enforcement official’ as saying ‘al Qaeda is on the run in Afghanistan, the noose is tightening around bin Laden, and I think what will happen is that Al Qaeda is going to fragment and that it will […]
11/16/2001
“On November 16 [2001], the bombing campaign [in Afghanistan] scored its first big victory. Mohammed Atef, bin Laden’s military commander, died in a Predator [drone] missile attack in Gardez, just south of Kabul.” – Julian E. Zelizer, ed., The Presidency of George W. Bush, Page 72 […]
11/16/2001
“One of the strongholds of the Taliban and al Qaeda before the U.S.-led invasion was Tora Bora, a network of man-made caves in the White Mountains in eastern Afghanistan, on the edge of Pakistan’s autonomous frontier. Tora Bora became a target in the early phase of the air campaign, and the United States started bombing […]
11/16/2001
“According to the Israeli intelligence news service DEBKAfile [on November 16, 2001], in mid-November [2001] the Northern Alliance was reinforced with two thousand men from the Russian Spetznaz special forces and six thousand men from special Uzbek units, transferred on the orders of President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, before a second attempt at Mazar-i-Sharif [Afghanistan]. […]