“In June [8, 2007], just as the [troop] surge [in Iraq] was about to take full effect, Defense Secretary [Robert] Gates effectively fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. [Peter] Pace, who was the last member or the old Rumsfeld team still in place, having been vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs […]
6/7/2007
“An investigation by the Council of Europe in June [7] 2007 confirmed reports of secret CIA prisons in Europe and other locations, which had first surfaced in 2005. The investigation, conducted by Swiss senator Dick Marty, concluded that ‘large numbers of people had been abducted across the world’ and transferred to countries where ‘torture is […]
5/31/2007
“According to unreleased statistics in the U.S. military database, there were 6,037 ‘significant acts’ of violence in Iraq during May 2007, the highest recorded total since November 2004.” [The 31st of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble, Page 179 […]
5/31/2007
In Appendix D of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s May 31, 2007, report under the “Additional Views of Chairman John D Rockefeller IV, Senator Ron Wyden, Senator Bayh, And Senator Whitehouse”: “The Committee’s report on the Intelligence Community’s pre-war assessments on post-war Iraq reveals that there was a steady flow of cautionary judgments sent to […]
5/30/2007
“Binyam Mohamed and other victims of the CIA’s ‘extraordinary rendition’ program brought a civil case against Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of Boeing used in California, in May [30] 2007. The lawsuit alleges that Jeppesen knowingly provided extensive flight services that enabled the CIA to carry out the renditions of Binyam Mohamed, Abou Elkassim […]
5/24/2007
WikiLeaks exposed a May 24, 2007, secret cable from the American embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. It read: “Over the past several months, Iran has taken a series of steps to expand and deepen its influence in Afghanistan. Afghan contacts point to the creation of the National Front and the National Unity Council, the discovery of […]
5/23/2007
A May 2007 study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland claimed: “Roughly 8 in 10 people surveyed in Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco, and Pakistan agreed that the United States is trying to ‘weaken and divide the Islamic world.’ Bush administration officials, including the president, have frequently said that they are […]
5/17/2007
As stated in “The Report of the Iraq Inquiry – Executive Summary:” “After visiting Basra again in mid-May, ACM [Air Chief Marshal] Stirrup continued to recommend the drawdown of UK forces. But other contemporary evidence indicated a more negative picture of circumstances in Basra than ACM Stirrup’s view that: ‘… the Iraqis are increasingly in a […]
5/15/2007
From the May/June 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs: “According to Ahmed Rashid, the top expert on the Taliban, up to 60,000 Pakistani volunteers had served in the Taliban militia before 9/11, alongside dozens of active-duty Pakistani army advisers and even small Pakistani army commando units. When these experts left, the Taliban lost their conventional military […]
5/15/2007
In May 2007, “Six Nobel peace Prize laureates from around the world signed their own statement in opposition to the Iraq Oil Law, writing that ‘it is immoral and illegal to use war and invasion as mechanisms for robbing a people of their vital natural resources.’ ” [The 15th of the month used for date […]