“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. American officials had been reluctant to pursue an investigation–sought by officials […]
7/10/2009
Journalist Bob Woodward wrote: “During my Oval Office interview with the President [Barack Obama, on July 10, 2009], Obama volunteered some extended thoughts about terrorism: ‘I said very early on, as a senator, and continued to believe as a presidential candidate and now as president, that we can absorb a terrorist attack. …We’ll do everything […]
7/1/2009
From journalist Bob Woodward’s July 1, 2009, Washington Post article, following his visit to Afghanistan: ” ‘One senior military officer said privately that the United States would have to deploy a force of more than 100,000 to execute the counterinsurgency strategy of holding areas and towns after clearing out the Taliban insurgents. That is at […]
6/30/2009
Regarding the troop pullout in Iraq, “Under the new arrangements the US military will be reduced to a supporting role; it will only be able to join operations at Iraq’s invitation and will no longer be able to conduct solo combat operations. From tomorrow [June 30, 2009], 130,000 US troops will almost exclusively be confined […]
6/29/2009
“Before the [March 2003 Iraq] invasion, [Iraqi informant] Curveball had become the CIA’s most valuable source on Iraq’s fictitious chemical and biological weapons programme, a man who underscored the White House’s push for war through a litany of lies that later claimed the careers of the former secretary of state Colin Powell, and CIA chief […]
6/29/2009
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said, regarding the end of U.S. presence on Iraqi streets: ” ‘We are on the threshold of a new phase that will bolster Iraq’s sovereignty. It is a message to the world that we are now able to safeguard our security and administer our own affairs…’ ” – Martin Chulov, […]
6/26/2009
On June 26, 2009, President Barack Obama “stated, ‘[T]he United States must never engage in torture, and must stand against torture wherever it takes place.’ ” – M. Cherif Bassiouni, The Institutionalization of Torture by the Bush Administration, Page 261 […]
6/26/2009
In a June 26, 2009, letter to CIA Director Leon E. Panetta, seven Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee said Panetta recently testified that “top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all Members of Congress, and misled Members for a number of years from 2001 to this week.” Democrats called on Panetta to “publicly […]
6/23/2009
“A secret intelligence program canceled by CIA Director Leon Panetta in June [2009] was meant to find and then capture or kill al-Qaida leaders at close range rather than target them with air strikes that risked civilian casualties, government officials with knowledge of the operation said Monday [July 13, 2009]. …Panetta canceled the effort on […]
6/22/2009
“In [June 22] 2009, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, one of al-Qaeda’s founders, described his group’s rapport with the Taliban during an interview with Al Jazeera in Afghanistan. ‘We are on a good and strong relationship with them,’ he explained, ‘and we frequently meet them.’ “ – Peter Bergen, The Longest War, Page 188 […]