Timeline
Early 2002
Captured terrorist Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi is transferred to CIA custody after a battle royale with the FBI and a personal plea from CIA director George Tenet to the President. The FBI, with experience in collecting evidence for trials, advocates treating the captive humanely, even bargaining with him. One high-ranking FBI officer instructs al-Libi's handlers to "handle this like it was being done right here, in my office in New York." The CIA wants information quicker. "They duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo," an ex-FBI official will later say. "At the airport the CIA case officer goes up to him and says, 'You're going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I'm going to find your mother and I'm going to fuck her.' So we lost that fight."
After two weeks of increasingly harsh interrogation, including waterboarding, al-Libi breaks down and starts to talk. But he provides information he is not in a position to know, telling his interrogators that al Qaeda operatives received chemical weapons training from the Iraqi government. The DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) will express concerns early on that al-Libi is telling his questioners what they want to hear. Nevertheless, al-Libi's information will be the basis for the Bush Administration's repeated claim that Iraq provided Al Qaeda with training on chemical and biological weapons. Al-Libi will later recant his testimony.
January 9, 2002
John Yoo of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department prepares a memo addressed to high Pentagon officials. It declares that the laws of war, including the Geneva Conventions, do not apply to Taliban or al Qaeda prisoners, nor to the military commissions set up to try such prisoners. The memo essentially argues that the president has unrestricted powers to conduct military operations.
Alberto Gonzalez seconds Yoo, saying, "In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
January 10, 2002
President Bush says he has never met personally with Kenneth Lay, isn't close with him, and that Lay actually supported Ann Richards, his opponent in the race for governor of Texas, in 1994. But Texans for Public Justice says that while Enron did give $12,500 to Richards during the 1994 election cycle, it gave $146,500 to Bush, including $47,500 directly from Lay and his wife. The Center for Public Integrity says that Enron and Lay have given over $550,000 to Bush since 1993, making the corporation Bush's top career donor.
January 11, 2002
William Howard Taft IV, the State Department's Legal Director, responds to John Yoo's January 9 memo, calling Yoo's analysis "seriously flawed." Taft writes: "In preceding conflicts, the United States managed thousands of prisoners without disavowing its obligations under the [Geneva] Conventions. There is no doubt that we may do the same in the current instance." Taft ends scathingly, "Your position is, at this point, erroneous in its substance and untenable in practice. Your conclusions are as wrong as they are incomplete."
First 20 detainees arrive at Guantanamo Bay.
January 18, 2002
One week after the first detainees arrive at Guantanamo, President Bush decides that they will not receive prisoner-of-war protection under the Geneva Conventions.
January 22, 2002
After a Defense Department photo is released showing detainees in goggles and masks, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld defends the detentions of "committed terrorists," saying, "We are keeping them off the street and out of the airlines." Besides, he says, "To be in an eight-by-eight cell in beautiful, sunny Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is not a - inhumane treatment. And it has a roof."
January 25, 2002
Alberto Gonzalez renders Geneva obsolete for US purposes in a policy-setting memo. When Secretary of State Colin Powell reads it, he immediately sets up a meeting with the President, telling him the document, if followed, "will reverse over a century of US policy and practice."
January 27, 2002
Vice President Cheney says of the prisoners at Guantanamo, "[T]hey are not lawful combatants. These are the worst of a very bad lot. They are very dangerous. They are devoted to killing millions of Americans."
January 29, 2002
Bush calls Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the "Axis of Evil" in his State of the Union address. The man who coined the phrase, Bush speechwriter David Frum, will later write in his book that he came up with it in answer to the question, "Can you sum up in a sentence or two our best case for going after Iraq?"
February 2002
A report from the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) informs top officials that captured Al Qaeda operative al-Libi is likely a fabricator. Periodically after this point, high-level members of the Bush Administration, including the President, will cite al-Libi's information in public appearances. Colin Powell relies heavily on accounts provided by al-Libi for his speech to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003, saying that he was tracing "the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in [the use of chemical] weapons to Al Qaeda."
The same DIA report states, "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements [like al Qaeda]. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control."
Sen. Bob Graham later relates an exchange that occurred at this time: "I was asked by one of the senior commanders of Central Command to go into his office. We did, the door was closed, and he turned to me, and he said, 'Senator, we have stopped fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan. We are moving military and intelligence personnel and resources out of Afghanistan to get ready for a future war in Iraq.'"
February 8, 2002
Bush, citing the highly suspect testimony of captured Al Qaeda operative al-Libi, says in a radio address, "Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training."
February 11, 2002
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tells Tony Snow of Fox News: "Iraq is probably not a nuclear threat at the present time."
February 13, 2002
First press mention of the Information Awareness Office, home to Total Information Aware ness, is made in the press. It is headed by former Admiral John Poindexter, who was convicted of five felony counts for his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair.
February 14, 2002
President Bush unveils his alternative to the Kyoto agreement to combat global warming, offering businesses incentives to achieve an estimated 4.5 percent voluntary reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. over 10 years. The president's plan is dramatically lower than the estimated 33 percent reduction sought by the Kyoto agreement for the United States, the world's largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.
February 26, 2002
Former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson travels to Niger to check out claims, based on a purported memorandum of understanding, that Saddam tried to obtain yellowcake uranium there. He learns that any authentic memorandum of understanding concerning yellowcake sales would have required the signatures of Niger's Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Minister of Mines. No one has signed such a document. He also concludes that as Niger pre-sold all its uranium to Japanese and European partners, it would have none left to sell to Iraq.
February 27, 2002
Close to two hundred detainees at the US detention center at Guantanamo go on hunger strike to protest a rule against the wearing of turbans. It is the first coordinated, widespread act of disobedience at the prison. US officials back down and allow the turbans. In the months and years to come, hunger strikes and attempted suicides will become regular occurrences.
March 2002
A CIA report describing the findings of Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger - findings discrediting the claim that Saddam attempted to obtain yellowcake uranium from that country - is circulated widely throughout the intelligence community. It is not flagged for high-level White House officials, and they do not see it.
"Chalabi's defector reports [are] now flowing from the Pentagon directly to the Vice-President's office, and then on to the President, with little prior evaluation by intelligence professionals," according to an October 2003 report by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker. The piece quotes Greg Thielmann, top intelligence official for the State Department, as saying, "There was considerable skepticism throughout the intelligence community about the reliability of Chalabi's sources, but the defector reports were coming all the time. Knock one down and another comes along. Meanwhile, the garbage was being shoved straight to the President."
Hersh reports that by this time "it was understood by many in the White House that the President had decided, in his own mind, to go to war." Hersh adds, "The undeclared decision had a devastating impact on the continuing struggle against terrorism. The Bush Administration took many intelligence operations that had been aimed at Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups around the world and redirected them to the Persian Gulf. Linguists and special operatives were abruptly reassigned, and several ongoing anti-terrorism intelligence programs were curtailed."
The President seems to affirm this when he pokes his head into a meeting between Rice and three senators and says, "Fuck Saddam, We're taking him out."
One year later, in March 2003, President Bush will tell the public, "I've not made up our [sic] mind about military action."
March 1, 2002
The State Department's intelligence bureau, INR, publishes an assessment entitled, "Niger: Sale of Uranium to Iraq Is Unlikely." According to the 2004 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, the INR analyst who drafted the document said it was produced at the behest of the Vice President's office.
March 8, 2002
The Downing Street memo known as the "Iraq: Options Paper" is prepared by Tony Blair's defense aides to outline military options for regime change in Iraq.
It reads, in part: "Iraq continues to develop WMD, although our intelligence is poor. Saddam has used WMD in the past and could do so again if his regime were threatened, though there is no greater threat now than in recent years that Saddam will use WMD.
"The US has lost confidence in containment. Some in government want Saddam removed. The success of Operation Enduring Freedom, distrust of UN sanctions and inspection regimes, and unfinished business from 1991 are all factors. Washington believes the legal basis for an attack on Iraq already exists. Nor will it necessarily be governed by wider political factors. The US may be willing to work with a much smaller coalition than we think desirable.
"Regime change has no basis in international law."
March 12, 2002
Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge announces the color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System. Threat level is declared yellow, or "elevated risk," and will remain there permanently, with occasional elevations to orange, or "high risk."
March 13, 2002
President Bush, in a press conference, says of Bin Laden: "I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him."
March 14, 2002
The Downing Street document later known as the "David Manning memo" is written by Foreign Policy Advisor David Manning for Tony Blair after Manning's meeting with his US-counterpart Condoleezza Rice.It reads, in part: "Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed.
"Bush has yet to find the answers to the big questions:
- how to persuade international opinion that military action against Iraq is necessary and justified;
- what value to put on the exiled Iraqi opposition;
- how to coordinate a US/allied military campaign with internal opposition (assuming there is any);
- what happens on the morning after?
"I think there is a real risk that the Administration underestimates the difficulties. They may agree that failure isn't an option, but this does not mean that they will avoid it.
"Will Americans really put in enough ground troops to do the job if the Kurdish/Shi'ite stratagem fails? Even if they do, will they be willing to take the sort of casualties that the Republican Guard may inflict on them if it turns out to be an urban war, and Iraqi troops don't conveniently collapse in a heap as Richard Perle and others confidently predict?"
March 15, 2002
British intelligence reports that there is only "sporadic and patchy" evidence about Saddam's alleged WMD. "We believe Iraq retains some production equipment, and some small stocks of CW [chemical warfare] agent precursors, and may have hidden small quantities of agents and weapons... There is no intelligence on any BW [biological warfare] agent production facilities."
March 19, 2002
A US attempt to oust Jose Bustani from his position as the director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) fails. Bustani, who leads a worldwide effort to eliminate and control WMD, has had a successful five-year term; Colin Powell has praised his "very impressive" work. But after Bustani argues that getting Saddam Hussein to sign international chemical weapons treaties would provide an alternative to war, the United States accuses him of "financial mismanagement," "demoralization" of his staff, "bias," and "ill-considered initiatives." The US pushes for a no-confidence vote at the UN, which it loses on this day. The United States threatens to undercut funding for the OPCW, and by April 2002 Bustani is gone.
March 22, 2002
The Downing Street memo later known as the "Peter Ricketts Letter" is written by political director Peter Ricketts to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. It weighs the political implications of joining the US drive to oust Saddam.
It reads, in part: "even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programmes will not show much advance in recent years ont he nuclear, missile or CW/BW fronts: the programmes are extremely worrying but have not, as far as we know", been stepped up.
"US scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing. To get public and Parliamentary support for military operations, we have to be convincing that:
- the threat is so serious/imminent that it is worth sending our troops to die for;
- it is qualitatively different from the threat posed by other proliferators who are closer to achieving nuclear capability (including Iran).
"But we are still left with a problem of bringing public opinion to accept the imminence of a threat from Iraq. This is something the Prime Minister and President need to have a frank discussion about. For Iraq, regime change: does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam."
March 24, 2002
Appearing on CNN's Late Edition, Cheney says of Saddam, "This is a man of great evil, as the president said. And he is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time."
March 25, 2002
In advance of Blair's trip to Texas, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw addresses a memo to the prime minister. It will become the Downing Street memo known as the "Jack Straw memo."
It reads, in part: "The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few. The risks are high, both for you and for the Government. I judge that there is at present no majority inside the [Parliamentary Labor Party] for any military action against Iraq, (alongside a greater readiness in the PLP to surface their concerns). Colleagues know that Saddam and the Iraqi regime are bad. Making that case is easy. But we have a long way to go to convince them as to:
(a) the scale of the threat from Iraq and why this has got worse recently:
(b) what distinguishes the Iraqi threat from that of e.g. Iran and North Korea so as to justify military action;
(c) the justification for any military action in terms of international law: and
(d) whether the consequence of military action really would be a compliant, law-abiding replacement government.
" there has been no credible evidence to link Iraq with UBL and Al Qaida. Objectively, the threat from Iraq has not worsened as a result of 11 September. What has however changed is the tolerance of the international community (especially that of the US), the world having witnessed on September 11 just what determined evil people can these days perpetrate.
"THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IRAQ, IRAN AND NORTH KOREA. By linking these countries together in this 'axis of evil' speech, President Bush implied an identity between them not only in terms of their threat, but also in terms of the action necessary to deal with the threat, but also in terms of the action necessary to deal with the threat. A lot of work will now [be] need[ed] to delink the three, and to show why military action against Iraq is so much more justified than against Iran and North Korea.
"We have also to answer the big question - what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything. Most of the assessments from the US have assumed regime change as a means of eliminating Iraq's WMD threat. But none has satisfactorily answered how that regime change is to be secured, and how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be better.
"Iraq has had NO history of democracy so no-one has this habit or experience."
March 26, 2002
A hearing is held in Detroit federal court on the first lawsuit challenging the US Justice Department’s decision to close immigrant deportation proceedings to the public and the press. Rabih Haddad was arrested at his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan on December 14, allegedly for minor visa violations, and had been imprisoned ever since. The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) after US Representative John Conyers and members of the Detroit media were barred from attending Rabih Haddad’s deportation hearing.
March 28, 2002
Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah is captured in Pakistan. A highly prized target whom administration officials will call a "chief operator," Zubaydah is later found to be severely mentally ill and in charge only of al Qaeda's minor logistics. He arranges travel for wives and children, for example, and has little to do with the "operational" side of the network's activities.
Zubaydah is delivered to a Thailand safehouse for interrogation. During his capture days earlier, bullet fragments pierced his abdomen and groin, and after his arrival in Thailand Zubaydah almost dies from infections to his wounds. He is fixed up, then stripped bare and put in a cell without a bunk or blankets. According to a story by the New York Times, Zubaydah is subjected to blaring music by, among others, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and is kept so cold he seems to "turn blue."
As the interrogation proceeds, FBI agents on the scene protest the tactics used, saying they are beyond acceptable boundaries. The CIA, claiming authorization from White House senior lawyers, continues.
Late March 2002
Dick Cheney tells Republican senators that the question is no longer if the US will invade Iraq, but when.
April 2002
The State Department begins work on the "Future of Iraq" project, a plan for the post-war stabilization and reconstruction. It recruits hundreds of Iraqi engineers, businessmen, lawyers, and other experts, and officials from various US government agencies, organizing them into more than 15 working groups. The plan is prescient on the topic of post-invasion looting. "The period immediately after regime change might offer these criminals the opportunity to engage in acts of killing, plunder and looting." It also recommends against disbanding the Iraqi army, out of fear that unemployed soldiers might turn against the occupying force.
Almost none of the State Department's work is used after the invasion.
The director of "Future of Iraq" project, Tom Warrick, will be slated to join Jay Garner and the reconstruction process in Iraq but his appointment will be overruled by the Pentagon's civilian leadership. The pattern of excluding State Department officials from post-war planning and reconstruction will become routine. "We almost disemboweled State," said one former Pentagon official. By spring 2003, after many avoidable mistakes have already been made, new arrivals on the CPA staff are given a CD-ROM with the State Department's work. "It's our Bible," says one official.
April 4, 2002
President Bush tells Britain's ITV: "I made up my mind that Saddam needs to go."
April 5, 2002
US officials discover that detainee Yaser Esam Hamdi, previously thought to be a Saudi, was in fact born in Louisiana, and they evacuate him from Guantanamo Bay to Norfolk, VA. Hamdi will be held in solitary confinement for more than two years without charges. His court case, challenging the United States' authority to hold enemy combatants indefinitely, will rise to the Supreme Court. The Court will rule that detainees are owed some measure of due process and must be charged.
April 9, 2002
Bush: "The other day we hauled in a guy named Abu Zubaydah. He's one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States." Members of the Administration call Zubaydah a "chief operator" and a "member of Osama bin Laden's inner circle."
When Bush is informed of Zubaydah's true stature within Al Qaeda (he is essentially a travel agent, having no role in operations, and is mentally ill to boot), Bush says to Tenet, "I said he was important. You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" Tenet's reply: "No sir, Mr. President." The CIA has top medical professionals fly to Pakistan to fix up the wounds Zubaydah sustained in his capture. "We got him in very good health, so we could start to torture him," says one CIA official.
As time passes Tenet begins pushing his staff for something he can take to the President, anything to support the President's public statements about Zubaydah. In a comment exemplifying CIA resentment, one top agency officials says, "Bush and Cheney knew what we knew about Zubaydah...why the hell did the President have to put us in a box like this?"
The CIA tortures Zubaydah until he starts talking about plots against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, and apartment buildings. Writes reporter Ron Suskind in his book The One Percent Doctrine, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."
April 11, 2002
Democratically elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is removed from power in a military coup. The Bush Administration blames Chavez for his own downfall and recognizes the interim government of businessman Pedro Carmona. Officials from the Organization of American States tell the London Observer that the United States sanctioned the coup and that Carmona and his fellow plotters had been received at the White House by Bush's key Latin America policy maker. Carmona dissolves the Venezuelan congress and suspends the constitution. Governments across the Western Hemisphere condemn the coup. Chavez is reinstalled 48 hours later.
April 17, 2002
Reports emerge that American forces could have caught or killed bin Laden at Tora Bora. Reporters confront Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with the story. He says he does not "know today of any evidence" that bin Laden "was in Tora Bora at the time, or that he left Tora Bora at the time." Later reports will make clear that the military was asked by the CIA at the time to supply troops to help close off bin Laden's escape routes. The military declined.
April 22, 2002
Jose Bustani is removed from his job as the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), in a special session of the UN called by the United States. The US dislikes him because he advocates solutions to the Iraq standoff short of war. After an earlier vote failed to remove Bustani, the US threatened to withhold OPCW's funding. Because the US provides over 20 percent of total funds, this act would hobble the organization. AP will later report that John Bolton, then undersecretary of state for arms control, led the charge for Bustani's removal.
A year after Bustani loses his job, a UN tribunal rules that the US charges against Bustani were "extremely vague" and that he was wrongly dismissed. He is awarded damages.
April 25, 2002
A Saudi delegation including head of state Prince Saud dines with George Bush and his advisers in Texas. The Saudis presents a list of requests, including that the United States will show greater concern for the Palestinians. President Bush agrees to nothing and makes no request for help on the war on terror, losing a key opportunity for diplomacy. The Saudis wonder if Bush read the very short preparatory document they had sent a few days in advance. Bush never got the document; it had been diverted to Vice President Cheney's office.
April 29, 2002
The Weekly Standard writes: "Saddam has been moving ahead into a new era, a new age of horrors where terrorists don't commandeer jumbo jets and fly them into our skyscrapers. They plant nuclear bombs in our cities."
May 2002
The most important corroborator of Curveball's story, a former major in the Iraqi intelligence service, is deemed a liar by the CIA and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). A fabricator notice is posted in US intelligence databases.
May 8, 2002
Jose Padilla arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport.
May 18, 2002
Details of the President's daily briefing of August 6, 2001, are revealed, including its title: "Bin Laden determined to strike in US." The same day, another pre-9/11 memo is discovered revealing that an FBI agent in Arizona had urged his superiors to more thoroughly investigate Middle Eastern men enrolling in flight schools in the US. Almost none of the information garnered by the FBI in monitoring flights schools was shared with the CIA before 9/11.
May 20, 2002
FBI Director Robert Mueller says there "will be another terrorist attack. We will not be able to stop it. It's something we all live with." Asked about those attacks taking the form of suicide bombers like those in Israel, Mueller said, "I think we will see that in the future, I think it's inevitable."
May 21, 2002
The FBI warns of possible terror attacks against the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, tall apartment buildings, and subways nationwide.
Tommy Franks is asked for details on how he would invade Iraq. He responds, "That's a great question and one for which I don't have an answer because my boss has not yet asked me to put together a plan to do that." (FDCH Political Transcripts, 05/21/02.) In fact, Franks was asked to start planning in Nov. 2001.
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld tells a Senate subcommittee that there are al Qaeda terrorists living in the United States. According to Ron Suskind's 2006 book, "The One Percent Doctrine," this is a reference to the "Lackawanna Six," a group of six men living near Buffalo, NY, who have made contact with al Qaeda and will be arrested by American authorities later in the year. Rumsfeld says they "are very well trained," though intelligence officials familiar with the case already recognize this is not the case.
May 21, 2002
The Senate votes to subpoena the Bush Administration for information on its contacts with the energy-trading company Enron.
May 23, 2002
President Bush goes on record as opposing the formation of the 9/11 Commission.
The FBI warns potential Memorial Day revelers that (uncorroborated and unconfirmed) information indicates a possible attack from terrorist scuba divers. Other possible targets, it warns, include the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, tall apartment buildings and subways nationwide.
June 1, 2002
Condoleezza Rice interrupts a deputy raising doubts about an Iraq war: "Save your breath. The President has already made up his mind."
Beginning of Operation Southern Focus, a bombing campaign against Iraqi defenses intended to lay the groundwork for invasion. The military admits in the summer of 2003 that it flew 21,736 sorties over southern Iraq between this time and the start of the war, attacking 349 targets. Bush tells the public four months later he hopes to avoid the use of force.
Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman put together a PowerPoint presentation outlining GOP strategy in the midterm elections. Nine months before the beginning of the war, it puts "Focus on war and economy" at the top of Republican priorities.
June 6, 2002
Colleen Rowley, the FBI agent who tried and failed to get her superiors to fully investigate Zacarias Moussaoui, testifies before Congress. She will be on the cover of TIME Magazine's 2002 Person of the Year issue, which is dedicated to whistleblowers.
On the same day as Rowley's explosive Hill testimony, the White House announces plans to create a Department of Homeland Security.
June 10, 2002
John Ashcroft interrupts his trip to Russia to announce that federal officials have arrested Jose Padilla, who was allegedly plotting with al Qaeda to detonate a "dirty bomb." Padilla, an American citizen, has been in custody for over a month. He will be held until November 2005 before being formally charged with a crime. He will never be charged with anything related in any way to a "dirty bomb."
June 15, 2002
The US asks the French to investigate the claim that Niger sold uranium to Iraq because French companies control mines in Niger. A French official sent a team of six to Niger to investigate. "We told the Americans, "'Bullshit. It doesn't make any sense,'" said the official.
Cheney and Libby begin visits to the CIA to have direct exchanges with analysts, creating an environment in which analysts often feel pressured to make intelligence and assessments match what the White House wants. "The analysts at the CIA. were beaten down defending their assessments," a former CIA official later tells The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh.
June 21, 2002
A CIA report entitled "Iraq and al Qaida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship" says, "Reporting is contradictory on hijacker Mohammed Atta's alleged trip to Prague and meeting with an Iraqi intelligence officer, and we have not verified his travels."
July 11, 2002
"Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance, the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will," Pentagon advisor Richard Perle tells PBS.
July 15, 2002
John Walker Lindh pleads guilty to two counts, fighting for the Taliban and carrying explosives. The government has dropped the most damaging charge, conspiracy to kill Americans. He is sentenced to 20 years in prison.
July 20, 2002
General Franks requests $700 million for war preparations. The President agrees and Congress is not informed. The money comes from a supplemental appropriation for the war in Afghanistan that Congress previously approved, Bob Woodward reports in Plan of Attack.
July 21, 2002
Sources in the British government tell the British press that the decision to go to war has been made. "President Bush has already made up his mind. This is going to happen. It is a given," says one source. The quote will not be reprinted by any mainstream American news sources except the conservative National Review, which attempts to downplay its importance in June 2005.
The so-called "Cabinet Office Paper" is written to prep Tony Blair's closest aides for a discussion on war in Iraq. It reads, "US military planning unambiguously takes as its objective the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime, followed by elimination of Iraqi WMDs. A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise. As already made clear, the US military plans are virtually silent on this point."
July 23, 2002
The Downing Street memo is produced. It is the minutes of a meeting held by top members of Tony Blair's administration and intelligence community. It reads, in part: "C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
August 1, 2002
Then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales writes a memo suggesting that President Bush's authority as commander-in-chief supercedes laws and treaties banning the use of torture against terror suspects.
A Justice Department memo, co-authored by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee and John Yoo, asserts that torture only includes physical pain so great that it leads to "death [or] organ failure," and that "mental pain requires lasting psychological harm." The memo also argues that the criminal law prohibiting torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations undertaken of enemy combatants pursuant to the President's Commander-in-Chief powers."
Lt. Carolyn Wood, MI, becomes officer in command of interrogators at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. She oversees use of dogs, stress positions, sexual degradation, hooding, and sleep deprivation.
The White House Iraq Group is created. Its members include Karl Rove, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen J. Hadley, as well as Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin. Its job is to sell the Iraq War to the public.
August 5, 2002
General Tommy Franks presents President Bush with an updated war plan.
August 7, 2002
The Washington Times reports that all of the Joint Chiefs have signed on to an Iraq invasion. Some have resisted for months, but "they can read the handwriting on the wall," says a source close to the administration.
August 8, 2002
Air strikes against Iraq, which have been ongoing through the summer, reach the level of a full air offensive.
August 20, 2002
"As we think through Iraq, we may or may not attack. I have no idea yet. But it will be for the objective of making the world more peaceful." President Bush tells Bob Woodward.
The same day, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says: "There are al Qaeda in Iraq. There are."
August 26, 2002
At a speech in Nashville, Vice President Cheney says, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."
He also says, "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we've gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors, including Saddam's own son-in-law, who was subsequently murdered at Saddam's direction."
The New York Times later reports that this is a gross misrepresentation. "The one specific source [Cheney] did cite was Hussein Kamel al-Majid, a son-in-law of Mr. Hussein's who defected in 1994 after running Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. But Mr. Majid told American intelligence officials in 1995 that Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled. What's more, Mr. Majid could not have had any insight into Mr. Hussein's current nuclear activities: he was assassinated in 1996 on his return to Iraq." It was impossible that Saddam's son-in-law was the source of what "we now know."
Newsweek alleges abuse of Taliban prisoners by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. In a prescient article, the magazine describes prisoners being beaten and dying of asphyxiation in sealed shipping containers.
September 1, 2002
U.S. Army General James "Spider" Marks is named the top intelligence officer for the coalition forces planning to invade Iraq. He begins looking at the intelligence on WMD. He finds the information in disarray and top officials disinterested. Intelligence analysts offer him 946 sites in Iraq that could hold WMD, but the information is old, poorly sourced, or not sourced at all. "There was no sense of urgency to get this as granular, as specific as possible, so that I could turn it over to a young private or a young sergeant that was going to come upon this WMD site and do something with that," Marks later tells Congressional Quarterly. As for Donald Rumsfeld and other top officials, their attention was not turned to WMD. "They ostensibly cared, but their give-a-shit level was really low."
Tyler Drumheller, the head of CIA spying in Europe, calls an official in German intelligence seeking access to Curveball. They meet for lunch. According to Drumheller, the German officer tells him that Curveball had suffered a mental breakdown. "They won't let you see him; there are a lot of problems. Principally, we think he's probably a fabricator."
Some 30 Americans are sent as CIA moles to Iraq, reports James Risen in his 2006 book State of War. They all have relatives in Iraq who are close to Iraq's weapons program, and are supposed to come back with information on WMD. All report that Iraq's unconventional weapons programs have been abandoned, and that the nuclear program hasn't been active for years. This intelligence is buried in the CIA, which suspects the moles were duped. No one informs President Bush, and one month later the intelligence community will release an intelligence estimate saying firmly that Iraq "is reconstituting its nuclear program."
September 3, 2002
President Bush summons congressional leadership to the White House to make the case for war in Iraq. The next day a larger body of lawmakers is taken to the Pentagon to discuss Iraqi policy with Cheney, Rumsfeld, and CIA director Tenet.
September 5, 2002
Sen. Bob Graham hosts Tenet in a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee. Graham later writes, "CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared." Graham asks for one to be presented to Congress. It will go on to be one of the most controversial documents in the Iraq War period.
September 6, 2002
"From a marketing point of view you don't introduce new products in August." White House Chief of Staff Andy Card on selling the Iraq war to the American public.
September 7, 2002
In a news conference with Tony Blair, President Bush claims that an IAEA report says Iraq is six months from developing a nuclear weapon. Because there is no new report from the IAEA saying this, most news agencies interpret the President to be referring to a 1998 report. When the IAEA objects and says that none of their 1998 reports argue anything of the kind, Scott McClellan tries to clear up the confusion. "He's referring to 1991 there. In '91, there was a report saying that after the war they found out they were about six months away." There are no IAEA reports from 1991 saying this.
September 8, 2002
Judith Miller and Michael Gordon write on the front page of the New York Times, "Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. The diameter, thickness and other technical specifications of the aluminum tubes had persuaded American intelligence experts that they were meant for Iraq's nuclear program." This is factually incorrect, as the administration knew at the time.
Later the same day, the administration goes on the offensive, pushing the aluminum-tubes-as-nuclear-threat story in multiple TV appearances. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice appears on CNN, saying the aluminum tubes "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs. We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
On Meet the Press, Vice President Dick Cheney says that Saddam Hussein "is trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium, specifically aluminum tubes. There's a story in the New York Times this morning. We do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs to build a nuclear weapon."
The New York Times later writes that "almost a year before, Ms. Rice's staff had been told that the government's foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons.... The experts, at the Energy Department, believed the tubes were likely intended for small artillery rockets."
Vice President Cheney also says on Meet the Press: "Mohamed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center."
Tim Russert: "What does the CIA say about that?"
Vice President Cheney: "It's credible."
The CIA in fact deemed this not credible a few days after Cheney first mentioned it.
September 10, 2002
The attorney general elevates the terror alert to orange, or "high risk," citing terrorist "chatter" about an attack on the anniversary of 9/11.
September 11, 2002
A member of the "Lackawanna Six" is arrested while traveling in Bahrain, in part because he uses the term "wedding," often code for a terrorist attack, in emails. The FBI knows that the man is in fact in Bahrain to get married, but Bush and Cheney, who are being briefed daily on the "Lackawanna Six," order his arrest.
The man admits during interrogation that he met bin Laden in a terrorist training camp, and that he did so with other men from the Lackawanna area. They are all arrested soon after by the FBI.
FBI counterterrorism chief Dale Watson will later tell the New York Times that the FBI was "99 percent sure" that the "Lackawanna Six" couldn't execute a terrorist act as the FBI watched them and waited for more evidence of their terrorist involvement. That percentage was not good enough for the White House. "The FBI had just received a primer on the Cheney Doctrine," writes Ron Suskind in The One Percent Doctrine.
September 12, 2002
The White House issues a report on Iraq intelligence entitled "A Decade of Deception and Defiance." It cites information from Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, the Judith Miller source who failed a CIA polygraph test. The information remains on the White House website to this day. When al-Haideri is taken back to Iraq to identify sites with biological weapons, he is unable to locate a single site.
Bush tells the UN General Assembly that Iraq is a "grave and gathering danger," and that "Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon. Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year." Cheney also says, "We will work with the UN Security Council for the necessary resolutions." But author Ron Suskind will later write that it was clear "to anyone in the innermost circle around the President [that UN resolutions] would be a faithless exercise; an exercise for show."
September 14, 2002
Dick Cheney tells Rush Limbaugh, "What's happening, of course, is we're getting additional information that, in fact, [Saddam] is reconstituting his biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs and that's what really precipitates the concern now."
A deputy attorney general announces the capture of the "Lackawanna Six": "federal authorities have arrested five United States citizens who reside near Buffalo, New York on charges of providing material support to al Qaeda." He mentions that they have been to an al Qaeda training camp, noting that it was the same one that John Walker Lindh visited.
September 15, 2002
White House economic advisor Lawrence Lindsay estimates the high limit on the cost of the Iraq War to be 1-2 percent of GNP, or about $100-$200 billion. Mitch Daniels, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, will later discount this, estimating the cost at $50-$60 billion.
September 16, 2002
Iraq agrees to let UN weapons inspectors return the country "without conditions." The Bush Administration dismisses the offer, one official saying, "If [Saddam] thinks this is about letting inspectors in, or playing the same old game of give a little when under pressure, he is about to learn differently."
Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly tells reporters, "The President hasn't made a decision with respect to Iraq."
September 18, 2002
Bush calls Saddam 's offer to let inspectors back in "his latest ploy."
Donald Rumsfeld tells Congress, "Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent, that Saddam Hussein is at least five to seven years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain; we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons. Iraq has these weapons."
September 19, 2002
Colin Powell tells Congress, "The President has not decided on a military option. Nobody wants war as a first resort."
Donald Rumsfeld tells Congress: "[Saddam has] amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons, including Anthrax, botulism, toxins, and possibly Smallpox. He's amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, Sarin and mustard gas. His regime has an active program to acquire nuclear weapons."
A memo from John Scarlett, chairman of Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), to Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's director of communications and strategy, explains that the discussion of aluminum tubes must be toned down in public documents because "there is no definitive intelligence that [they are] destined for a nuclear programme."
September 20, 2002
President Bush, in a reversal, announces his support for the creation of an independent commission to investigate the 9/11 attacks.
Vice President Cheney says: "We now have irrefutable evidence that [Saddam] has once again set up and reconstituted his program to take uranium, to enrich it to sufficiently high grade, so that it will function as the base material as a nuclear weapon. And there's no doubt about the fact that the level of effort has escalated in recent months."
September 24, 2002
Downing Street publishes a 55-page dossier on Iraq's weapons capabilities. It states without qualification that Iraq can launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes. It also says Saddam has sought to acquire "significant quantities" of uranium from Africa.
September 25, 2002
President Bush tells journalists, "You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror."
September 26, 2002
President Bush says in a Rose Garden speech, "the Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons." A Defense Intelligence Agency report distributed in the White House around the time of the speech says there is "no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing or stockpiling chemical weapons or whether Iraq has or will establish its chemical agent production facilities."
In a speech in Houston later that same day, President Bush discusses the threat posed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, saying: "After all, this is a guy that tried to kill my dad."
September 27, 2002
Donald Rumsfeld calls the link between Iraq and al Qaeda "accurate and not debatable."
September 28, 2002
Bush addresses the nation: "The danger to our country is grave and it is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. The regime has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist groups, and there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq. This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year."
October 1, 2002
At the request of Congress, a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is produced. It is supposed to represent the best the intelligence community can offer, and contains the claims that will eventually be justifications for war. Many turn out to be completely wrong. The NIE does include dissents, mostly from the State Department's intelligence bureau, INR. They are largely ignored by policymakers.
In advance of the NIE's release, the Vice President and his Chief of Staff make several unprecedented visits to the CIA, which many say had the effect of distorting the intelligence assessment process. One former CIA officer tells PBS, "I was at the CIA for 24 years. The only time a Vice President came to the CIA building was for a ceremony, to cut a ribbon, to stand on the stage. But not to harangue analysts about finished intelligence."
One of the primary authors of the NIE will later say of its creation, "This wasn't an inquiry into how can Iraq threaten the United States; it wasn't an inquiry into what are Al Qaeda sources of support. It instead was basically research in support of a specific line of argument. I regret having had a role in it."
Copies of the NIE are kept in vaults on Capitol Hill protected by armed guards, and are available only to lawmakers who show up in person and without staff. No more than six senators and a handful of congressmen read past the executive summary.
After meeting with members of Congress, President Bush tells reporters: "Of course, I haven't made up my mind we're going to war with Iraq. I've made up my mind we need to disarm the man."
October 2, 2002
In a Rose Garden speech, President Bush says, "The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency."
"If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong," CIA counsel Jonathan Fredman tells U.S. officials at Guantanamo asking how far they can go in extracting information from detainees.
October 4, 2002
Jonathan Landay of Knight Ridder reports that intelligence officials and weapons experts are having doubts about the way the Bush Administration handles dissent on intelligence. LexisNexis records only one newspaper as having run the article: The Bradenton Herald, of Bradenton, Florida.
It reads, in part: "Several senior administration and intelligence officials, all of whom spoke only on the condition of anonymity, charged that the decision to publicize one analysis of the aluminum tubes and ignore the contrary one is typical of the way the administration has been handling intelligence about Iraq.
"The White House and the Pentagon, these officials said, are pressuring intelligence analysts to highlight information that supports Bush's Iraq policy and suppress information and analysis that might undercut congressional, public or international support for war."
October 5, 2002:
George Tenet reads a draft of a speech George Bush is set to deliver in Cincinnati on October 7. It includes the claim that Saddam has "been caught attempting to purchase" uranium in Niger. The CIA tells Stephen Hadley and others at the White House that the statement is incorrect. Specifically, they say: "[R]emove the sentence because the amount is in dispute and it is debatable whether it can be acquired from the source. We told Congress that the Brits have exaggerated this issue. Finally, the Iraqis already have 550 metric tons of uranium oxide in their inventory."
October 6, 2002
Seeing that the Niger uranium claim, despite CIA objections, has not been taken out of the draft of George Bush's upcoming Cincinnati speech, George Tenet calls Stephen Hadley and expresses concern.
As a follow-up, the CIA sends a memo to the White House, specifically to Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, saying: "Why we recommend removing the sentence about procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points (1) The evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under the control of the French authorities. (2) The procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And (3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this is one of the two issues where we differed with the British."
Convinced, the White House takes the claim out of the Cincinnati speech. It will, however, be included in the President's next State of the Union address.
October 8, 2002
Knight Ridder reporters Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott write:
"A growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in [Bush's] own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war.
"These officials charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses -- including distorting his links to the al-Qaida terrorist network -- have overstated the amount of international support for attacking Iraq and have downplayed the potential repercussions of a new war in the Middle East.
"They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary."
October 9, 2002
In response to Bush's October 7 speech in which the President made his case for war against Iraq, anonymous officials tell the Guardian that Bush "relied on a slanted and sometimes entirely false reading of the available US intelligence" and that analysts are being pressured into finding intelligence that supports the administration's policy. "Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA," says the CIA's former head of counter-intelligence.
October 10, 2002
Press Secretary Ari Fleischer mentions a "coalition of the willing" regarding possible military action in Iraq. The phrase, used occasionally in the past to refer to other conflicts, will become a standard as war in Iraq approaches.
October 11, 2002
The Senate and House both vote overwhelmingly to give Bush authorization to go to war. The bill reads: "The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to (1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq." Authorization is not tied to any UN resolutions. All serious Democratic candidates for President vote yes.
October 15, 2002
Saddam Hussein empties Abu Ghraib, where prisoners were systematically tortured for decades. After invasion it is looted and vandalized.
October 16, 2002
President Bush tells the public, "I have not ordered the use of force. I hope the use of force will not become necessary."
October 21, 2002
Six suspected Al Qaeda members living in Lackawanna, NY, are indicted.
Saddam Hussein empties his prisons.
October 23, 2002
Roughly one year after Rumsfeld and some of his senior advisers set up their own Iraq intelligence shop, Pentagon officials acknowledge its existence in the press.
October 29, 2002
Congress passes the Help America Vote Act in response to the controversy over the 2000 Presidential elections. Instead of addressing the issue of voter suppression and intimidation, the act concentrates in large part on replacing punch-card ballots with electronic voting machines. The act requires that all voting systems be auditable and produce a permanent paper record with a manual audit capacity available as an official record for any recount conducted; many of the machines sold to states for elections do not.
November 1, 2002
High-level CIA operatives stationed in the Middle East gather in London for a secret meeting. They are told war is inevitable, and just a few months away, according to James Risen's book, State of War.
Naji Sabri, Iraq's foreign minister, makes a deal to reveal Iraqi state secrets, according to the later account of Tyler Drumheller, former CIA chief in Europe. The White House is excited to have a high-level spy in the Iraqi government until Sabri tells them Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction. "The group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they're no longer interested," Drumheller later tells CBS. Secretary of State Rice says Sabri was just "a single source among multiple sources," and therefore that his information could not be regarded as definitive. But, as Drumheller would point out, "They certainly took information that came from single sources on uranium, on the yellowcake story, and on several other stories."
An inexperienced CIA case officer, working at the CIA's largest "black site" in Afghanistan, allegedly orders that an uncooperative young detainee be stripped naked and chained to a concrete floor. The detainee is left overnight without blankets and freezes to death. The CIA officer is later promoted.
November 2, 2002
"We know he's got chemical weapons," President Bush tells a crowd in Tampa, Florida.
November 5, 2002
Election Day. Republicans gain control of the Senate.
In Florida, Broward County officials admit that software glitches caused a failure to report 100,000 votes from turnout figures, but claim it did not affect actual votes in races.
November 7, 2002
"War is not my first choice, it's my last choice," President Bush tells reporters.
November 8, 2002
The UN Security Council passes Resolution 1441, which the Bush Administration eventually uses as legal justification for military action in Iraq. The original draft of the resolution had to be reworked because it too clearly tipped the Bush Administration's intention to get Saddam to balk and thus justify war. Hans Blix, the head of the UN weapons inspection team in Iraq, said of the first draft, "It was so remote from reality...[it] was written by someone who didn't understand how [inspections] function." (Vanity Fair, May 2004) The second draft, which passes, calls for Iraq to disarm or face "serious consequences."
November 14, 2002
"Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that. It won't be a World War III." Donald Rumsfeld, predicting the length of the war in Iraq, on a call-in radio program.
November 25, 2002
November 27, 2002
Donald Rumsfeld receives a memo requesting that he sign off on "Category III" interrogation techniques for use on prisoners. He does so. It is later shown that Category III interrogation techniques are consistent with torture as defined in U.S. federal law, something the DOD knew at the time of the memo
Weapons inspections resume in Iraq, headed by Hans Blix.
December 2002
Bush appoints Michael Brown, a political crony with no disaster-management experience, as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Boston Herald later confirms that Brown had been fired from his previous job, as manager of the International Arab Horse Association, over a series of lawsuits arising from his performance failures.
December 2, 2002
DOD memo approves interrogation techniques at Guantanamo, including dogs and nudity. Rumsfeld adds a handwritten note that says, "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours? D.R."
December 6, 2002
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, speaking at a 100th birthday party for Senator Strom Thurmond, says: "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."
Thurmond ran for President in 1948 on a platform of strictly segregating the black and white races.
Paul O'Neill and Lawrence Lindsay are forced off President's Bush economic team. Many suspect that Lindsay's public estimate for the cost of the war ($100-200 billion, as against the administration's official estimate of $50-60 million) plays a role.
December 7, 2002
Iraq submits a 12,200-page declaration to the UN purporting to document all its unconventional arms.
December 13, 2002
President Bush on Thursday sharply rebukes incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott for comments that some have called racist, saying any suggestion that segregation was acceptable is "offensive and it is wrong."
December 19, 2002
The US discounts the Iraqi weapons declaration because it fails to account for various weapons that a UN inspection team said it "could have produced," and because it does not mention the tubes purchased for a uranium centrifuge or the attempts to procure uranium from Niger.
Secretary of State Colin Powell declares, "The Iraqi regime is required by Resolution 1441 to report those attempts. Iraq, however, has failed to provide adequate information about the procurement and use of these tubes. Most brazenly of all, the Iraqi declaration denies the existence of any prohibited weapons programs at all." The State Department issues a fact sheet saying that "The Declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger."
December 20, 2002
Wounded by the political firestorm over his comments criticized by many as racially divisive, Sen. Trent Lott announces he is stepping down as Republican leader in the Senate. Lotts been under increasing pressure to step aside because of the furor, which Republicans fear will distract from their congressional agenda and undermine efforts to reach out to minority voters.
December 21, 2002
The CIA's leadership goes to the White House to present the evidence for WMD in Iraq. Bush is underwhelmed, telling Tenet, "Nice try, but that isn't gonna sell Joe Public. This is the best we've got?" Tenet responds, "It's a slam dunk case!"
December 26, 2002
A Washington Post article by Dana Priest and Barton Gellman exposes the abuse of Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, detailing a "brass-knuckled quest for information" that includes "stress and duress techniques." "Americans with direct knowledge and others who have witnessed the treatment," the Post reports, say that "captives are often 'softened up' by MPs and U.S. Army Special forces troops who beat them up and then confine them in tiny rooms." The paper also reports the practice of "extraordinary renditions"—shipping prisoners to countries where they can be tortured more freely. One official who was "directly involved" explained: "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them."
December 30, 2002
Director of the OMB Mitch Daniels tells the New York Times that the estimate for the cost of the war is $50-60 billion, not $100-200 billion, as Lawrence Lindsay had earlier said.
December 31, 2002
President Bush tells a reporter, "You said we're headed to war in Iraq. I don't know why you say that. I hope we're not headed to war in Iraq. I'm the person who gets to decide, not you."