On November 1, 2007, former Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar “said Saudi intelligence was ‘actively following’ most of the September 11, 2001, plotters ‘with precision.’ ‘If U.S. security authorities had engaged their Saudi counterparts in a serious and credible manner, in my opinion, we would have avoided what happened,’ he said.” – Pam Benson, “Ex-Saudi ambassador: […]
10/24/2007
“In October [24] 2007, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the monetary costs of the Iraq War could reach $2.4 trillion through 2017.” – Ricardo S. Sanchez with Donald T. Phillips, Wiser in Battle, Page 455 […]
10/23/2007
“In October [23] 2007 the president [Bush] spoke about enhanced interrogation at the National Defense University. ‘This program has produced critical intelligence that has helped us stop a number of attacks,’ he said, ‘including a plot to strike the U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, a planned attack on the U.S. consulate in Karachi [Pakistan], a […]
10/22/2007
“In an audiotape broadcast by Al Jazeera in October [22] 2007, bin Laden conceded that his like-minded militants in Iraq and elsewhere ‘made mistakes.’ He lays his personal authority and credibility on the line. In a rare moment of self-criticism, he advised ‘himself, Muslims in general, and brothers in Al Qaeda everywhere to avoid extremism’ […]
10/22/2007
As quoted by the Global Exchange Press Room on October 22, 2007: ” ‘The link between war and [global] warming is oil,’ said Steve Kretzmann of [progressive research and advocacy organization] Oil Change International. ‘The oil industry gave $10 million in campaign contributions to this Congress. Perhaps this explains Congress’s inability to address these issues.’ […]
10/15/2007
In Iraq, “U.S. troops on a raid in southern Salahuddin Province found the revealing diary of a regional leader of al Qaeda in Iraq [Abu Tariq]. The repeated theme of his entries in the fall of 2007 was how the flipping of the insurgency was eroding his group. ‘There were almost 600 fighters in our […]
10/15/2007
According to the October 15, 2007, edition of the Standard Daily, General John Abizaid, the retired head of U.S. Central Command and military operations in Iraq, said of the Iraq War: ” ‘Of course it’s about oil, we can’t really deny that.’ ” – Antonia Juhasz, The Tyranny of Oil, Page 319 […]
10/5/2007
In an appearance on the Charlie Rose television show on October 5, 2007, counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen said: “One of the lessons of the twentieth century…was that ‘there has never been a successful counterinsurgency that took less than 10 years.’ (But, he emphasized, he wasn’t thinking about U.S. forces being in combat for 10 years.)” […]
10/2/2007
“The former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, who reviewed the NSA [National Security Agency] [warrantless eavesdropping] program in 2003-2004, testified before Congress in October [2] 2007 that he ‘could not find a legal basis for some aspects of the program,’ adding, ‘It was the biggest legal mess I have […]
9/30/2007
According to a Washington Post article on September 30, 2007: “Since May 2003, insurgents have launched over eighty-one thousand IED [improvised explosive device] attacks on U.S. and allied forces, killing or wounding thousands of U.S. troops. The U.S. military’s efforts to combat the use of IEDs have not been particularly successful; as one senior CENTCOM […]