In an interview with author Stephen Hayes on June 23, 2004, Vice President Dick “Cheney explained that because al Qaeda was not a state–as Geneva Conventions signatories are–claims that those terrorists were protected by the conventions were illogical. ‘We have the Abu Ghraib problem in Iraq, but Iraq is different than Afghanistan. Iraq is different […]
6/23/2004
In an interview with author Stephen Hayes on June 23, 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney defended his position regarding the treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda members as enemy combatants: ” ‘We had, I think, several concerns in the aftermath of 9/11. We had al Qaeda terrorists kill 3,000 Americans that morning. We were concerned […]
6/22/2004
“Defense Department auditors had begun to question the CPA’s [Coalition Provisional Authority’s] spending spree with Iraqi oil funds in the waning days of the occupation, noting that as much as $8.8 billion could not be properly accounted for, including $2.4 billion in one-hundred-dollar bills that was flown to Baghdad from the Federal Reserve Bank of […]
6/22/2004
“In June [22] 2004, just after the Abu Ghraib [prison in Iraq] photos first emerged, [President] Bush insisted that he would never order torture. ‘Let me make very clear the position of my government and our country,’ he told reporters. ‘We do not condone torture. I have never ordered torture. I will never order torture. […]
6/21/2004
“American and foreign officials have also grown increasingly concerned about the prospect that detainees who arrived at Guantánamo representing little threat to the United States may have since been radicalized by the conditions of their imprisonment and others held with them. ‘Guantánamo is a huge problem for Americans,’ a senior Arab intelligence official familiar with […]
6/21/2004
“In interviews, the officials said at least five prisoners released from Guantánamo since early 2003 had rejoined the Taliban and resumed attacks on American and Afghan government forces. Although two American officials said only one of the former detainees had turned out to be an important figure, Afghan officials said all five men were in […]
6/21/2004
“New accounts from officials in Afghanistan and the United States indicate that at least 5 of the 57 Afghan detainees released [from Guantanamo] have returned to the battlefield as Taliban commanders or fighters. Some of the five have been involved in new attacks on Americans, officials in southern Afghanistan said, including a notorious Taliban commander, […]
6/21/2004
“In September 2002, eight months after the detainees began to arrive in [Guantanamo] in Cuba, a top-secret study by the Central Intelligence Agency raised questions about their significance, suggesting that many of the accused terrorists appeared to be low-level recruits who went to Afghanistan to support the Taliban or even innocent men swept up in […]
6/21/2004
An examination of Guantánamo detainees “has found that government and military officials have repeatedly exaggerated both the danger the detainees posed and the intelligence they have provided. In interviews, dozens of high-level military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the United States, Europe and the Middle East said that contrary to the repeated assertions of senior […]
6/21/2004
On the June 21, 2004, episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, host Jon “Stewart played [Vice President Dick] Cheney’s outright denial that he had ever said that representatives of al-Qaeda and Iraq intelligence met in Prague [Czech Republic], and then Stewart froze Cheney’s image and played the exact video clip when Cheney had indeed […]