On October 11, 2001, “four days after initiating bombing of al Qaeda facilities…President Bush again publicly appealed to the Taliban to cooperate and turn over bin Laden. When they did not, he later said the U.S. would get bin Laden ‘dead or alive.’ ” – Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies, Pages 274-275 […]
10/11/2001
Regarding a possible connection between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks: ” ‘I wish we could find a connection, but we haven’t,’ said a senior official in Jordan, which, like Israel, considers Iraq a deadly threat to regional peace.” – Raymond Bonner, “Experts Doubt Iraq Had Role in Latest Terror Attacks,” The New York Times, Oct. […]
10/10/2001
“…the Tora Bora area [in Afghanistan] was pounded by massive cluster bombs as the US sought to avenge 11 September by destroying al Qaeda and the Taliban regime that harboured them. Twenty thousand Afghan civilians died in this and subsequent bombardments, which went on for eleven weeks from 10 October 2001 and devastated 128 Afghan […]
10/10/2001
“Saudi Arabia has so far refused to freeze the assets of Osama bin Laden and his associates, and has proved unwilling to cooperate fully on the investigation of the hijacking suspects in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Bush administration officials said today [October 10, 2001]. The failure of a critical ally in the Muslim world […]
10/10/2001
“Fifty-six Islamic nations holding an emergency meeting here [Doha, Qatar] issued a statement today [October 10, 2001] that avoided directly condemning the United States’ attacks against the Taliban in Afghanistan, while warning against inflicting civilian casualties or striking against other Arab states. …The communiqué clearly and succinctly expressed the various Islamic governments’ central concern–self-preservation, saying, […]
10/10/2001
After an October 10, 2001, National Security Council meeting, “Appearing with [Secretary of State Colin] Powell, [Attorney General John] Ashcroft and [FBI Director Robert] Mueller, he [President Bush] unveiled a list of 22 ‘Most Wanted Terrorists’ to supplement the bureau’s popular and successful ‘Ten Most Wanted’ list. …At the top of the list were Osama […]
10/9/2001
On why Senator Russ Feingold opposed the Patriot Act, “To pass this bill without even considering a single amendment to a document that exceeded two hundred pages of criminal, intelligence, and military-related provisions, when the bill had not been seriously reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, seemed tantamount to abandoning any semblance of a real […]
10/9/2001
Regarding the attack on Afghanistan, “The bombing was so extensive and Afghanistan’s infrastructure so pitiful that within forty-eight hours [by October 9, 2001], [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was complaining that he was running out of targets to hit. ‘We’re pounding sand,’ [President] Bush later told [journalist] Bob Woodward.” – Elisabeth Bumiller, Condoleezza Rice: An […]
10/9/2001
” ‘You replay everything in your mind, and you ask, *Was there anything else that could have been done?* ‘ [President Bill] Clinton said later [in a speech he made to the Washington Society of Association Executives on October 9, 2001]. ‘I tried to take Mr. Bin Laden out of the picture for the last […]
10/9/2001
Military operations against the Taliban “are blind because the U.S. does not have any specific or strategic targets,’ said Mahmoud Kharabsheh, an independent member of Parliament [in Jordan], dismayed about the lack of published evidence against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. ‘If the U.S. possessed concrete evidence, it would have disclosed it to the […]