On December 19, 2006, President Bush “summoned reporters from the Washington Post to the Oval Office to announce that he would support a force increase. ‘We need to reset our military,’ he told them. ‘There’s no question the military has been used a lot.’ The move was a significant reversal after years of denying the […]
12/19/2006
According to a New York Times article on December 19, 2006, “The DOJ [Department of Justice] decided not to prosecute over 20 cases that had been referred to it between 2005 and 2006, citing evidentiary problems and difficulty in grasping the legal issues which existed in the DOJ legal opinions that authorized harsh tactics in […]
12/19/2006
“On December 19 [2006], a U.S. drone fired a missile on a car in Helmand [Afghanistan], killing Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Usmani, the number two to Mullah [Mohammad] Omar in the Taliban shura. Two other Taliban commanders were killed along with him. His car had been tracked from Quetta [Pakistan] by a British RAF [Royal Air […]
12/19/2006
On December 19, 2006, “President Bush said for the first time, ‘We’re not winning, we’re not losing in Iraq’–a striking turnaround from his formulation the previous month.” – Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble, Page 115 […]
12/18/2006
Robert “Gates was sworn in as defense secretary on December 18 [2006], and in his first days in office made the argument to the president [Bush] that he should shut down Guantanamo as soon as possible and move the trials of terrorism suspects to the United States.” – Elisabeth Bumiller, Condoleezza Rice: An American Life, […]
12/17/2006
“On December 17, 2006, former secretary of state Colin Powell had said that America was ‘losing in Iraq’ and a ‘surge cannot be sustained.’ ” – Dick Cheney, In My Time, Page 455 […]
12/17/2006
U.S. Commander in Iraq, General George “Casey already had tried a [troop] surge in Baghdad in the summer of 2006, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [Colin Powell] argued in a December [17, 2006] appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation. So, Powell said, ‘I am not persuaded that another surge of troops […]
12/14/2006
On December 14, 2006, the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute released a study titled ‘Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq.’ The study “suggested that with a surge of new troops America could finally succeed. Focusing on holding certain areas of Baghdad, it concluded that the deployment of twenty thousand additional troops would be enough […]
12/11/2006
“On Monday, December 11 [2006], President Bush hit a new low in his ratings, with only 36 percent of respondents approving even ‘somewhat’ of his performance and a stunning 62 percent disapproving [according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll].” – Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble, Page 98 […]
12/8/2006
Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wrote: “We drew up a working paper in early December [8, 2006] summarizing the options that the Pentagon’s civilian and military leaders were considering [for Iraq]. ‘[F]ailure in Iraq will place the American people in even greater danger,’ my cover memo for the paper began.” – Donald Rumsfeld, Known and […]