“The Bush strategy on counternarcotics and Alternative Livelihoods, which consumed almost $3 billion from 2005 to 2008, ‘was the single most wasteful, most ineffective program that I had ever seen,’ [Special Representative to Afghanistan Richard] Holbrooke seethed to me [journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran, for a Washington Post article on June 19, 2009]… ‘It wasn’t just a […]
6/16/2009
“Another ‘high value’ detainee, [al Qaeda operations chief] Abu Zubaydah, said he almost died under interrogation. ‘After months of suffering and torture, physically and mentally, they did not care about my injuries that they inflicted to my eye, to my stomach, to my bladder, and my left thigh and my reproductive organs… Doctors told me […]
6/15/2009
“In June, 2009, he [President Barack Obama] drafted a memo instructing [CIA Director Leon] Panetta to create a ‘detailed operation plan’ for finding the Al Qaeda leader [Osama bin Laden] and to ‘ensure that we have expended every effort.’ Most notably, the President intensified the C.I.A.’s classified drone program; there were more missile strikes inside […]
6/15/2009
“In June 2009 the United Nations added four LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba] officials to the Consolidated List of Individuals associated with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and created by UN Security Council Resolution 1267 (passed in May 2005), which obligates all states to freeze the funds and assets of these officials. The U.S. Department of the […]
6/15/2009
“Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed told U.S. military officials that he had lied to the CIA after being abused, according to documents made public Monday [June 15, 2009]. The claim is likely to intensify the debate over whether harsh interrogation techniques generated accurate information. …’I make up stories,’ Mohammed said, describing in broken […]
6/11/2009
Journalist Ahmed Rashid interviewed Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari for a June 11, 2009, article in the New York Review of Books. ” ‘We are not a failed state yet, but we may become one in ten years if we don’t receive international support to combat the Taliban threat,’ Zardari told me indignantly, pointing out […]
6/1/2009
In an appearance at the National Press Club on June 1, 2009, former Vice President Dick “Cheney restated his claim that ‘there was a relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq that stretched back 10 years. It’s not something I made up. …We know for a fact that Saddam Hussein was a sponsor–a state sponsor–of terror. […]
6/1/2009
In an appearance at the National Press Club on June 1, 2009, former Vice President Dick Cheney said: " 'I do not believe and have never seen any evidence to confirm that [Hussein] was involved in 9/11. We had that reporting for a while, [but] eventually it turned out not to be true,' Cheney conceded. […]
5/31/2009
“In front of a packed audience on Sunday night [May 31, 2009] at the Times Center in New York City, General Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of all coalition forces in Iraq, called for a truth commission to investigate the abuses and torture which occurred there. The General described the failures at all levels of […]
5/26/2009
“On May 26, 2009, one of the most sensitive reports from the world of deep intelligence appeared in the TOP SECRET/CODEWORD President’s Daily Brief [PDB]. …The headline on this item read, ‘North American al Qaeda trainees may influence targets and tactics in the United States and Canada.’ This report, and another highly restricted one, said […]