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  |  The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror |
I distinctly remember when the Iraq war started exactly eight years ago with trepidation. My family was involved with this war. A beloved nephew was already underway to the front. I looked at this war personally like any family who got sons and daughters in the service in harms way.
My little Jason no more, a US Marine Medical Corpsman, assigned to the front in the thick of battle and to whom I dedicate this posting.
In the Battle of Baghdad U.S. Marines from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force where Jason was attached, have been advancing on a second front to the southeast of the capital. Marines were involved in "difficult engagements" with Iraqi fighters including advances on foot and hand-to-hand combat. The Marines also faced Arab fighters from outside Iraq who joined the city's defenses, a battle that one officer said involved bayonet fighting. The Marines launched their attack from near Diwaniyah and south of Kut, destroying the Republican Guard's Baghdad Division. Along the way, the Marines routed a Republican Guard infantry division and a regular Iraqi army division. Casualty figures were suppressed by the media, international estimates are that hundreds died. Reports from Ft. Stewart, Georgia, about the overflow of 3rd Infantry Division wounded soldiers sleeping in tent cities when they needed medical treatment were never explained. There were too many wounded GIs from the Battle to fit in the Ft. Stewart Hospital.
Now 2011, like any other day, we look eight years to the day and see the damage. As we carefully extract our troops from this quagmire, created by hubris. (AP) As their convoy reached the barbed wire at the border crossing out of Iraq on Wednesday, the soldiers whooped and cheered. Then they scrambled out of their stifling hot armored vehicles, unfurled an American flag and posed for group photos.
For these troops of the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, it was a moment of relief fraught with symbolism. Eight years after the U.S.-led invasion, the last American combat brigade was leaving Iraq, well ahead of President Barack Obama’s Aug. 31 deadline for ending U.S. combat operations there.
That presence is far from over. Scatterings of combat troops still await departure, and some 50,000 will stay another year in what is designated as a noncombat role. They will carry weapons to defend themselves and accompany Iraqi troops on missions. Special forces will continue to help Iraqis hunt for terrorists.
So the U.S. death toll — at least 4,415 by Pentagon count as of Wednesday — may not yet be final.
| It is inescapable historical reality that leaders of nations will lie to their people to trick them into wars they otherwise would have refused. It is not "conspiracy theory" to suggest that leaders of nations lie to trick their people into wars. It is undeniable fact. This brings us to the present case. Did the government of the United States lie to the American people, more to the point, did President Bush and his Neocon associates lie to Congress, to initiate a war of conquest in Iraq? This question has been given currency by a memo leaked from inside the British Government which clearly indicates a decision to go to war followed by the "fixing" of information around that policy. This is, as they say, a smoking gun. But the fact is that long before this memo surfaced, it had become obvious that the US Government, aided by that of Great Britain, was lying to create the public support for a war in Iraq. First off is Tony Blair's "Dodgy Dossier", a document released by the Prime Minister that made many of the claims used to support the push for war. The dossier soon collapsed when it was revealed that much of it had been plagiarized from a student thesis paper that was 12 years old! The contents of the dossier, however much they seemed to create a good case for invasion, were obsolete and outdated. This use of material that could not possibly be relevant at the time is clear proof of a deliberate attempt to deceive.
The chief proponent of this hoax was Colin Powell, who presented illustrations such as this one to the United Nations on February 5th, 2003. This claim fell apart when it was revealed that these trailers were nothing more than hydrogen gas generators used to inflate weather balloons. This fact was already known to both the US and UK, as a British company manufactured the units and sold them to Iraq. Colin Powell's speech to the UN was itself one misstatement after another. Powell claimed that Iraq had purchased special aluminum tubes whose only possible use was in uranium enrichment centrifuges. Both CIA and Powell's own State Department confirmed that the tubes were parts for missiles Saddam was legally allowed to have. Following the invasion, no centrifuges, aluminum or otherwise were found. Powell also claimed to the United Nations that the photo on the left showed "Decontamination Vehicles". But when United Nations inspectors visited the site after the invasion, they located the vehicles and discovered they were just firefighting equipment. Powell claimed the Iraqis had illegal rockets and launchers hidden in the palm trees of Western Iraq. None were ever found. Powell claimed that the Iraqis had 8,500 liters (2245 gallons) of Anthrax. None was ever found. Powell claimed that Iraq had four tons of VX nerve gas. The UN had already confirmed that it was destroyed. The only VX ever found were samples the US had left as "standards" for testing. When the UN suspected that the US samples had been used to contaminate Iraqi warheads, the US moved quickly to destroy the samples before comparison tests could be carried out. Powell claimed that Iraq was building long-range remote drones specifically designed to carry biological weapons. The only drones found were short-range reconnaissance drones. Powell claimed that Iraq had an aggregate of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical and biological warfare agents. Powell gave no basis for that claim at all, and a DIA report issued the same time directly contradicted the claim. No biological or chemical weapons were found in Iraq following the invasion. Powell claimed that "unnamed sources" confirmed that Saddam had authorized his field commanders to use biological weapons. No such weapons were ever used by the Iraqis to defend against the invasion and, of course, none were ever found in Iraq. Powell claimed that 122mm warheads found by the UN inspectors were chemical weapons. The warheads were empty, and showed no signs of ever having contained chemical weapons. Powell claimed that Iraq had a secret force of illegal long-range Scud missiles. None were ever found. Powell claimed to have an audio tape proving that Saddam was supporting Osama Bin Laden. But independent translation of the tape revealed Osama's wish for Saddam's death. Colin Powell's UN debacle also included spy photos taken from high flying aircraft and spacecraft. On the photos were circles and arrows and labels pointing to various fuzzy white blobs and identifying them as laboratories and storage areas for Saddam's massive weapons of mass destruction program. Nothing in the photos actually suggested what the blobby shapes were and during inspections which followed the invasion, all of them turned out to be rather benign. In at least one case, the satellite Powell claimed had taken one of the pictures had actually been out of operation at the time. And many questioned why Powell was showing black and white photos when the satellites in use at the time over Iraq took color images.
Since Israel had bombed Iraq's nuclear power plant years before, it was claimed that the only reason Saddam would have for buying uranium oxide was to build bombs.
This hoax fell apart fast when it was pointed out that Iraq has a great deal of uranium ore inside their own borders and no need to import any from Niger or anywhere else. The I.A.E.A. then blew the cover off the fraud by announcing that the documents Bush had used were not only forgeries, but too obvious to believe that anyone in the Bush administration did not know they were forgeries! The forged documents were reported as being "discovered" in Italy by SISMI, the Italian Security Service. Shortly before the "discovery" the head of SISMI had been paid a visit by Michael Ledeen, Manucher Ghorbanifar, and two officials from OSP, one of whom was Larry Franklin, the Israeli spy operating inside the OSP. In July, 2005, the Italian Parliament concluded their own investigation and named four men as suspects in the creation of the forged documents. Michael Ledeen, Dewey Clarridge, Ahmed Chalabi and Francis Brookes. This report has been included in Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame, and Paul McNulty, the prosecutor of the AIPAC spy case. A recently declassified memo proves that the State Department reported the fact that the NIger documents were forgeries to the CIA 11 days before President Bush made the claim about the Niger uranium based on those documents. In the end, the real proof that we were lied to about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is that no weapons of mass destruction were ever found. That means that every single piece of paper that purported to prove that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was by default a fraud, a hoax, and a lie. There could be no evidence that supported the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. In a way, the existence of any faked documents about Iraq's WMDs is actually an admission of guilt. If one is taking the time to create fake documents, the implication is that the faker is already aware that there are no genuine documents. What the US Government had, ALL that they had, were copied student papers, forged "Yellow Cake" documents, balloon inflators posing as bioweapons labs, and photos with misleading labels on them. And somewhere along the line, someone decided to put those misleading labels on those photos, to pretend that balloon inflators are portable bioweapons labs, and to pass off stolen student papers as contemporary analysis. And THAT shows an intention to deceive. Lawyers call this "Mens Rea", which means "Guilty Mind". TV lawyer shows call it "Malice aforethought". This means that not only did the Bush Administration lie to the people and to the US Congress, but knew they were doing something illegal at the time that they did it. All the talk about "Intelligence failure" is just another lie. There was no failure. Indeed the Army agents who erroneously claimed that missile tubes were parts for a uranium centrifuge received bonuses, while the Pentagon smeared Hans Blix, and John Bolton orchestrated the firing of Jose Bustani, the director of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, because Bustani was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. The President of the United States and his Neocon associates lied to the people of the United States to send them off on a war of conquest. Defenders of the government will point to the cases listed at the top of the page as proof that lying to the people is a normal part of the leader's job and we should all get used to it. And because "Everybody does it" that we should not single out the present administration. But this is madness. We do not catch all the murderers, yet when we catch a murderer, we deal with them as harshly as possible, in order to deter more murderers. Right now, we have the criminals at hand. and, while other leaders in history have lied to start wars, for the first time in history, the lie stands exposed while the war started with the lies still rages on, to the death and detriment of our young men and women in uniform. We cannot in good moral conscience ignore this lie, this crime, lest we encourage future leaders to continue to lie to us to send our kids off to pointless wars. Lying to start a war is more than an impeachable offence; it the highest possible crime a government can commit against their own people. Lying to start a war is not only misappropriation of the nation's military and the nation's money under false pretenses, but it is outright murder committed on a massive scale. Lying to start a war is a betrayal of the trust each and every person who serves in the military places in their civilian leadership. By lying to start a war, the Bush administration has told the military fatalities and their families that they have no right to know why they were sent to their deaths. It's none of their business. Our nation is founded on the principle of rule with the consent of the governed. Because We The People do not consent to be lied to, a government that lies rules without the consent of the governed, and ruling without the consent of the governed is slavery. You should be more than angry. You should be in a rage. You should be in a rage no less than that of the families of those young men and women who have been killed and maimed in this war started with a lie.You need to be in a rage and you need to act on that rage because even as I type these words, the same government that lied about Iraq's nuclear weapons is telling the exact same lies about Iran's nuclear capabilities. The writing is on the wall; having gotten away with lying to start the war in Iraq, the US Government will lie to start a war in Iran, and after that another, and after that another, and another and another and another because as long as you remain silent, and as long as you remain inactive, the liars have no reason to stop. As long as you remain inactive, the liars have no reason to stop. None. It is time to prosecute the liars. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" .
Lost & Unaccounted for in Iraq - $9 billion of US taxpayers' money and $549.7 milion in spare parts shipped in 2004 to US contractors. Also, per ABC News, 190,000 guns, including 110,000 AK-47 rifles. Missing - $1 billion in tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other equipment and services provided to the Iraqi security forces. (Per CBS News on Dec 6, 2007.)
IRAQI TROOPS, CIVILIANS & OTHERS IN IRAQ The war in Iraq could end up costing more than World War Two concludes a major new study by a top international economist. In a book to be published tomorrow Nobel prize winning Professor Joseph Stiglitz has found that the Iraq war has now cost a staggering one and a half trillion pounds. The long-term hidden costs which include such items as medical care and pensions for wounded soldiers mean that it will eventually surpass the two and a half trillion pound cost of the Second World War. Scroll down for more The cost of war: The Iraq war has cost a staggering one and a half trillion pounds so far And that forecast is valid, the study argues, even if the US ends the war next year and tries to pull out of Iraq as quickly as possible. Professor Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank, has also concluded that the war in Iraq is at least partly responsible for the US economic slowdown and is impeding a recovery. When the war started five years ago experts said it would virtually pay for itself through increased Iraqi oil exports. "It used to be thought that wars were good for the economy ? but no economist really believes that anymore," said Professor Stiglitz. The new study entitled "The Three Trillion Dollar War" contrasts the incredible price of the war with other items of government spending. For example, the war costs as much every four hours as the annual research budget for autism. The annual cost could pay for 15 million school teachers or could send 43 million students to university. Dr Linda Bilmes, an economist who has co-authored the study, estimates that the US is now directly spending 8-billion pounds a month on Iraq and Afghanistan but that there are other enormous hidden costs such as long- term medical care for wounded soldiers and increased oil prices. Professor Stiglitz of Columbia University, New York, is also chairman of the UK's World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester.
RESULTS OF POLL Taken in Iraq in August 2005 by the British Ministry of Defense (Source: Brookings Institute) How the Iraq war destroyed America's fighting men
U.S. soldiers: Are they being destroyed by the Iraq war? For America's fighting forces, this is their darkest hour. The U.S. military, the most powerful fighting force on Earth, is facing a collapse in morale far more devastating even than that experienced in the toughest days of the Vietnam War. The troops are bogged down in the occupation of Iraq, where they are trapped on a murderous front line in an urban guerilla war for which they had little preparation, and for which support at home has all but disappeared. Video...a look back at the Iraq Invasion and its consequences
Faced with hostility abroad and indifference to the war at home, the soldiers are fast degenerating into an out-of-control force consumed by drink, drugs, sex crimes and mental collapse. An appalling picture emerges from the daily headlines - the latest revealing that nearly one third of the injured coming home are suffering from the mental scars of war. New figures show that of 104,000 who had sought medical help by the end of 2005, some 32,010 were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, drug addiction or alcoholism - three times as many, proportionally, as those who returned from Vietnam. At home in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the latest military murder trial into an Iraqi atrocity has opened with the prosecution alleging that Staff Sgt Ray Girourd, of the legendary 101st Airborne Division, ordered soldiers to slaughter male prisoners. The incident took place last May during a raid on a suspected camp of insurgents outside Samarra. Two soldiers have already admitted to the killings. They have been sentenced to 18 years in a military jail and will testify for the prosecution. Specialist William Hunsaker and Private Corey Clagett say Girourd, 24, ordered them to cut the prisoners free, let them run and then shoot them down, covering up the crime by making it look as if the prisoners were attacking and died in a firefight. In his defence, Girourd's lawyers claim he was obeying orders from a senior officer, Colonel Michael Steele, commander of 3rd Brigade, to "kill all military-age men". If that proves to be true, President Bush's Iraqi adventure has brought America to an unprecedented new low of atrocity. So how has it come to this? Perhaps part of the answer lies in the 'haji hooch' or 'haji juice', a locally-made, 90 per cent proof moonshine whisky regularly sold to American troops by Iraqi merchants and often smuggled into their bases by colleagues from the newly-formed Iraqi army. It is swilled along with prescription drugs such as amphetamines, distributed by medics ordered to keep troops sharp for extended patrols and flight missions, and tranquilisers meant to calm nerves. The American military, on ships as well as in army camps, has long been 'dry', with an official ban on all alcohol. But this has not stopped an Apocalypse Now-style dependency on drugs and booze in a crazed 'self-medication' that gets only worse with worsening fighting conditions, tightening an already depressing downward spiral. Figures forced from the Pentagon by the New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act make shocking reading: 240 of the 665 cases of military indiscipline in Iraq and Afghanistan involved drugs and alcohol. Seventy-three of those 240 cases were the most serious yet known from these two wars: murder, rape, robbery and assault. To get an idea of how deep into depravity some of these men have sunk, here is just one of the sex offences: in March, 2006, a group of men - again from the 101st Airborne Division - gang-raped a 14-year-old girl, and then murdered her and her family. They had been manning a road block in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, and drinking 'hajji juice' supplied by Iraqi soldiers for most of the day. According to the prosecution evidence presented when he was charged with murder in a civilian court, Private Steven Green planned and led the attack. He and at least three others broke into the house after changing into civilian clothes. They forced two adult women and a man into a separate room, and then took turns in raping the girl, and were still violating her when Green went into the other room and began shooting. He returned to the rape scene saying that he had "shot them all", and then raped the girl himself before killing her with two bullets to the head. For all the murders, he used a Russian AK-47 rifle he had found in the house, and then casually dumped it in a canal. Private Green, who was discharged from the army with a 'personality disorder', faces the death penalty. In one case as long ago as May 2004, when President Bush was declaring 'victory' and the vast majority of Americans were still cheering him on, Private Justin Lillis got drunk on illicit whisky on his base in Balad, stole a Humvee and went on a rampage, shooting up a residential neighbourhood with his M16 rifle, before taking pot shots at the guards on the entrance to his own base. Six months later, Private Chris Rolan of the Third Brigade got into a drink-fuelled argument with a fellow soldier and shot him dead with his 9mm service pistol. Another remarkable statistic can be no co-incidence: a record number of women soldiers - as many as one-third of the total returning from tours in Iraq - are coming home pregnant. Lyndie England, for example, the private who became the disgraceful face of torture at Abu Ghraib prison, photographed making sexual taunts at naked Iraqi prisoners, gave birth to the child of the ringleader of those disgraced torturers as she was about to be led off to a military jail. There was already controversy over the role of women in combat as America marched to war in the Middle East. These figures suggest that the critics were right when they said that putting women soldiers on the front line would be a mistake. But the women were never there on the front line because the Pentagon and White House believed in women's equality; they were there because President Bush launched this most irresponsible war when America was chronically short of combat troops. The draft ended with the Vietnam War, too loathed by American voters for any politician to maintain, and so did a great many of the attractions of life in the armed forces. America switched to the kind of lean 'professional' army long before adopted by Britain, but it did so with much less success. By 2000, America was enlisting pretty much anyone its recruiters could drag in off the streets. First they filled the vacancies with women, promising 'pride' and education for jobs which would last a lifetime. Then they dropped the academic standards. Then they even lowered the standards for physical stature and fitness. The idea was that smart-bombs and technological superiority would win wars on the ground anyway. Small, fast forces of overwhelming technological might would secure the world for American freedom and commerce. Boots on the ground, whether worn by male or female soldiers, belonged to the past. This policy failed, of course, to be replaced by the 'surge' in extra troops, not to mention the everextended tours of duty by soldiers, thousands of them from the parttime National Guard, who never really expected to have to leave home at all. But the worst aspect of all this is the scandal about the Bush administration's treatment of its dead, wounded and suffering. As any soldier will tell you, there is nothing so crucial as the treatment of casualties and traditions of honouring the dead. This is sacred turf to fighting men: you are rescued from the battlefield at any price, you are mended if possible, you are honoured in death, and you take comfort from knowing that your loved ones will be cared for, come what may. Did no one at the White House bother to read a little history? History tells us why the Royal Navy built the first of Britain's hospitals at Greenwich and why Lloyd George promised 'homes fit for heroes'. America has just been waking up to the scandal of the Walter Reed military hospital, where returning wounded were left unattended in rooms while rats scurried below their cots and doctors cut down on pain killers to save money. For years, the Pentagon has banned the taking of photographs of returning coffins, while President Bush has refused to attend funerals because honouring the dead was deemed bad for public relations. Already, there is a new crop of veterans joining the old lags from Vietnam on the streets of American cities, begging, robbing to support their drug addictions and lining-up outside the overnight shelters and the charity soup-kitchens. It all points to another shocking statistic: almost one in three of troops returning from the Iraq and Afghan fronts in need of health care are wounded not in the body, but in the mind. The younger the soldiers, the greater the incidence of post traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, alcoholism and drug addiction. This third compares with 10 per cent of Vietnam veterans - survivors of a war so far considered to have produced an unprecedented number of mental casualties. The upshot of all this? If President Bush wants to know the full cost of his adventure in the Middle East, he must look beyond the bloody carnage in Iraq every day, to his own cities in America. There he will see the shattered remains of many of the men - and women - he sent off to war and perhaps, just perhaps, realise what a dreadful mistake he has made.
July 25, 1990: US Ambassador Gives Seeming ‘Green Light’ for Iraq’s Invasion of Kuwait
Entity Tags: Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein, April Glaspie, Joseph C. Wilson, James A. Baker, Margaret Tutwiler Timeline Tags: US-Iraq 1980s Category Tags: Iraq Invasion of Kuwait, US-Iraq Collaboration
July 25, 1990: Hussein Pretends to Bluff over Intent to Invade Kuwait
During a meeting with US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie (see July 25, 1990), Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein interrupts the meeting to take a phone call from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak has worked tirelessly to mediate the burgeoning dispute between Iraq and Kuwait. After the phone call, Hussein tells Glaspie that he has just told Mubarak the same thing he told her—that he will not invade Kuwait so long as there is an active negotiating process taking place. The US later learns that Hussein asked Mubarak not to share that piece of information with Kuwait in order to keep his “bluff” alive. Mubarak apparently honors the request, because Iraq’s subsequent invasion (see August 2, 1990) is a complete surprise to Kuwait. Mubarak is reportedly infuriated at Hussein’s apparent betrayal of his trust. [Wilson, 2004, pp. 98] In 2003, Glaspie’s then-deputy, Joseph Wilson, will tell an interviewer that Hussein “lied to [Glaspie]. He lied to President Mubarak that he was going to allow the negotiating process to go forward.” [PBS, 2/28/2003] In 2004, Wilson will write: “I believe that he met with Glaspie for the express purpose of deceiving us about his intentions, as he did with… Mubarak at the same time. In this way, he maintained the element of surprise. [Wilson, 2004, pp. 123] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, April Glaspie Category Tags: Iraq Invasion of Kuwait July 25, 1990 and After: US Ambassador Scapegoated for Giving Iraq Permission to Invade?The deputy for US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie, Joseph Wilson, later writes of the fateful meeting between Glaspie and Saddam Hussein (see July 25, 1990). In his view, Glaspie will become a scapegoat, receiving unfair blame for giving Hussein tacit permission to invade Kuwait. Wilson later writes, “The one-on-one meeting with Saddam was fateful for Ambassador Glaspie. Out of it emerged the charge that she had not been tough enough with him and had somehow given him a green light to invade Kuwait. Nothing could be further from the truth. Glaspie has been made a convenient scapegoat for a more complicated and complex failure of foreign policy.… Her explanation of American policy towards Arab disputes did not waver from our standing instructions. The United States did not take positions on the merits of such quarrels between Arab nations, although the policy was to, in the strongest terms, urge that the parties to a dispute resolve it diplomatically or through international mediation, and not via military threats or action.” During the meeting, Hussein made clear to Ambassador Glaspie that Iraq had no intention of taking any military action against Kuwait so long as there was an ongoing negotiating process. He tells Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the same thing (see July 25, 1990). In later years, Iraqi officials such as Aziz and then-Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Nizar Hamdun will acknowledge that Glaspie did nothing more than reiterate the main points of US policy towards Iraq to Hussein. Wilson, a friend of Hamdun’s, will recall his last conversation with Hamdun before his death in July 2003, where the ailing Hamdun confirmed that, in Wilson’s words, “The Iraqi leadership had not come away thinking she had tacitly indicated that the US condoned the use of force. On the contrary, [Hussein] knew exactly what the American position was—opposition to Iraqi military action, under any and all circumstances.” [Wilson, 2004, pp. 99-101] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Joseph C. Wilson, Nizar Hamdun, April Glaspie, Hosni Mubarak Events Leading Up to the 2003 Invasion of IraqPre-9/11 Plans for WarProject: Events Leading Up to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq May 1991: President Bush Authorizes CIA to Create Conditions for Removal of Saddam Hussein; CIA Hires PR Firm
President George H. W. Bush signs a covert “lethal finding” authorizing the CIA to spend a hundred million dollars to “create the conditions for removal of Saddam Hussein from power.” [New Yorker, 6/7/2004] The CIA forms the Iraqi Opposition Group within its Directorate of Operations to implement this policy. [Ritter, 2005, pp. 128] Awash in cash, the agency hires the Rendon Group to influence global political opinion on matters related to Iraq. According to Francis Brooke, an employee of the company who’s paid $22,000 per month, the Rendon Group’s contract with the CIA provides it with a ten percent “management fee” on top of whatever money it spends. “We tried to burn through $40 million a year,” Brooke will tell the New Yorker. “It was a very nice job.” The work involves planting false stories in the foreign press. The company begins supplying British journalists with misinformation which then shows up in the London press. In some cases, these stories are later picked up by the American press, in violation of laws prohibiting domestic propaganda. “It was amazing how well it worked. It was like magic,” Brooke later recalls. Another one of the company’s tasks is to help the CIA create a viable and unified opposition movement against Saddam Hussein (see June 1992). This brings the Rendon Group and Francis Brooke into contact with Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi (see After May 1991). The CIA will soon help Chalabi and Rendon create the Iraqi National Congress (INC) to further the goal of toppling Hussein. [New Yorker, 6/7/2004] Author and intelligence expert James Bamford will later say, “Chalabi was a creature of American propaganda to a large degree. It was an American company, the Rendon Group, that—working secretly with the CIA—basically created his organization, the Iraqi National Congress. And put Chalabi in charge basically.… From the very beginning Chalabi was paid a lot of money from the US taxpayers. The CIA paid him originally about 350,000 dollars a month, to Chalabi and his organization.” [PBS, 4/25/2007] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Rendon Group, Iraqi Opposition Group, James Bamford, George Herbert Walker Bush, Francis Brooke, Central Intelligence Agency, Ahmed Chalabi, Iraqi National Congress Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Chalabi and the INC
March 8, 1992: Raw US World Dominance Plan Is Leaked to the Media
Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, Lincoln Chafee, Soviet Union, United States Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Motives
June 1992: Iraqi National Congress Formed
The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), headed by Masud Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), headed by Jalal Talabani, meet in Vienna along with nearly 200 delegates from dozens of Iraqi opposition groups to form an umbrella organization for Iraqi dissident groups. [Federation of American Scientists, 8/8/1998; New Yorker, 6/7/2004] The event is organized by the Rendon Group, which has been contracted by the CIA to organize the wide spectrum of Iraqi dissidents into a unified movement against Saddam Hussein. Rendon names the group the “Iraqi National Congress” (INC). The CIA pays the Rendon Group $326,000 per month for the work, funneled to the company and the INC through various front organizations. [ABC, 2/7/1998; CounterPunch, 5/20/2004; Rolling Stone, 11/17/2005 Sources: Unnamed former CIA operative] Thomas Twetten, the CIA’s deputy directorate of operations, will later recall: “The INC was clueless. They needed a lot of help and didn’t know where to start.” [New Republic, 5/20/2002; Bamford, 2004, pp. 296-297] Rendon hires freelance journalist Paul Moran and Zaab Sethna as contract employees to do public relations and “anti-Saddam propaganda” for the new organization. [SBS Dateline, 7/23/2003] Entity Tags: Paul Moran, Zaab Sethna, Iraqi National Congress, Rendon Group, Jalal Talabani, Masud Barzani, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Kurdistan Democratic Party, Central Intelligence Agency, Thomas Twetten Category Tags: Chalabi and the INC, Pre-9/11 Plans for War
November 1993: Iraqi Exile Plans to Overthrow Hussein, with Approval of Clinton Administration
Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi (see 1992-1996) approaches the Clinton administration with a plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Defense Intelligence Agency agent Patrick Lang will later recall that the plan, dubbed “End Game,” starts with a revolt by Iraq’s Kurdish and Shi’a insurgents that will, theoretically, trigger an insurrection by Iraqi military commanders. The military will replace Hussein with a regime friendly to both Israel and the US. Clinton officials give the plan tentative approval, though as Lang will later write: “The plan was based on a belief that Iraq was ripe for revolt and that there were no units in the armed forces that would fight to preserve Saddam’s government. Since the same units had fought to keep Saddam in power during the Kurdish and Shi’a revolts of a few years before, it is difficult to see why the sponsors of End Game would have thought that.” Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein learns of the plan and prepares his own response. When Chalabi puts the plan into action, the Iraqi military, instead of revolting against Hussein, kills over 100 INC-backed insurgents (see March 1995). After the debacle, neither the CIA nor the White House will have anything more than superficial contact with Chalabi until 2001. [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004; Unger, 2007, pp. 126] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Central Intelligence Agency, Clinton administration, Patrick Lang, Ahmed Chalabi Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War
March 1995: Chalabi Military Operation against Saddam Hussein Fails
Ahmed Chalabi creates a militia army of about 1,000 fighters in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and bribes tribal leaders in the city of Mosul to support a planned rebellion against Saddam Hussein (see November 1993). He is also hosting members of Iranian intelligence who promise that when the operation is launched, Iran will simultaneously hit Iraq from the south. But the CIA learns that Baathist officials have caught wind of the plot and the CIA instructs agent Robert Baer to tell Chalabi that “any decision to proceed will be on your own.” Chalabi, who has no military experience, decides to go through with the plot anyway. But the operation quickly flounders when over 100 INC fighters are killed by Iraqi forces, many more of Chalabi’s fighters desert, the bribed Iraqi tribal leaders stay home, and the Iranians do nothing. The CIA is furious that it funded the operation, which becomes known within the agency as the “Bay of Goats.” [CounterPunch, 5/20/2004; New Yorker, 6/7/2004; Unger, 2007, pp. 126] CENTCOM commander General Anthony Zinni has similar feelings. “It got me pretty angry,” he recalls. “They were saying if you put a thousand troops on the ground, Saddam’s regime will collapse, they won’t fight. I said, ‘I fly over them every day, and they shoot at us. We hit them, and they shoot at us again. No way a thousand forces would end it.’ The exile group was giving them inaccurate information. Their scheme was ridiculous.” Zinni had warned Congress that Chalabi’s invasion plan was “pie in the sky, a fairy tale,” but was ignored. [Unger, 2007, pp. 160-161] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Robert Baer, Iraqi National Congress, Central Intelligence Agency, Anthony Zinni, Ahmed Chalabi, Rendon Group, Francis Brooke Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Chalabi and the INC
July 8, 1996: Neoconservative Think Tank Advocates Aggressive Israeli Foreign Policy
Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Robert Loewenberg, Meyrav Wurmser, Jonathan Torop, Richard V. Allen, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Benjamin Netanyahu, David Wurmser, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, Jeffrey T. Bergner, Douglas Feith Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Motives, Pre-9/11 Plans for War
November 12, 1997: Neoconservative Advocates Backing INC in Overthrowing Hussein
David Wurmser, director of the Middle East program at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, writes an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the US government should support Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress [INC] and work to foment “an Iraqi insurgency to depose the butcher of Baghdad.” Wurmser writes: “Washington has no choice now but to abandon the coup option and resurrect the INC. An insurgency may be able to defeat Saddam’s weak and demoralized conventional army. But one thing is clear: There is no cost-free way to depose Saddam. He is more resolute, wily and brutal than we. His strength lies in his weapons of terror; that is why he is so attached to them…. Organizing an insurgency to liberate Iraq under the INC may provoke Saddam to use these weapons on the way down. Better that, though, than current policy, which will lead him to use them on his way back up.” [Wall Street Journal, 11/12/1997] Entity Tags: David Wurmser, Saddam Hussein, Ahmed Chalabi Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Propaganda, Chalabi and the INC
January 26, 1998: Neoconservative Think Tank Urges US to Attack Iraq
Entity Tags: Robert B. Zoellick, Vin Weber, William Kristol, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William Schneider Jr., Richard Perle, William J. Bennett, Richard Armitage, Robert Kagan, Paula J. Dobriansky, Donald Rumsfeld, Craig Unger, Peter Rodman, Elliott Abrams, John R. Bolton, James Woolsey, Francis Fukuyama, Jeffrey T. Bergner, Paul Wolfowitz Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Key Events Related to DSM, Motives, Pre-9/11 Plans for War
February 19, 1998: Neoconservative Group Calls on US to Help Overthrow Hussein
The Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG), a bipartisan group made up largely of foreign policy specialists, sends an “Open Letter to the President” calling for President Clinton to use the US military to help Iraqi opposition groups overthrow Saddam Hussein and replace him with a US-friendly government. US law forbids such an operation. The group is led by, among others, former Representative Stephen Solarz (D-NY) and prominent Bush adviser Richard Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense. Entity Tags: Richard Burt, Richard Armitage, Richard Perle, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Paula J. Dobriansky, Peter Rosenblatt, Project for the New American Century, Richard V. Allen, Peter Rodman, Robert A. Pastor, Saddam Hussein, Robert Kagan, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, William Kristol, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William B. Clark, Sven F. Kraemer, Stephen Solarz, Roger Robinson, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Bryen, Robert C. McFarlane, Michael Ledeen, Patrick Lang, Fred C. Ikle, Dov S. Zakheim, Elliott Abrams, Frank Carlucci, Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Donald Rumsfeld, Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, American Enterprise Institute, Ahmed Chalabi, Max Singer, David Wurmser, Bernard Lewis, Caspar Weinberger, Gary Schmitt, Kurt Nimmo, Leon Wienseltier, Martin Peretz, Joshua Muravchik, Frederick L. Lewis, John R. Bolton, Jeffrey T. Bergner, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Jarvis Lynch, Jeffrey Gedmin, Jim Lobe, Iraqi National Congress Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Politicization of Intelligence, Pre-9/11 Plans for War
May 29, 1998: PNAC Calls on Republican Congressional Leaders to Assert US Interests in Persian Gulf
The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) publishes a letter addressed to Congressman Newt Gingrich and Senator Trent Lott. The letter argues that the Clinton administration has capitulated to Saddam Hussein and calls on the two legislators to lead Congress to “establish and maintain a strong US military presence in the region, and be prepared to use that force to protect [US] vital interests in the Gulf—and, if necessary, to help removed Saddam from power.” [Century, 5/29/1998] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Newt Gingrich, US Congress, Project for the New American Century, Trent Lott, Clinton administration Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War
July 1998: Prominent Neoconservative Says INC Control of Northern Iraq Would Increase Israeli Security
David Wurmser says that having a region in northern Iraq controlled by the Iraqi National Congress would provide the missing piece to complete an anti-Syria, anti-Iran block. “If Ahmed [Chalabi] extends a no-fly, no-drive in northern Iraq, it puts scuds out of the range of Israel and provides the geographic beachhead between Turkey, Jordan and Israel,” Wurmser says. “This should anchor the Middle East pro-Western coalition.” [Forward, 7/31/2003] Entity Tags: David Wurmser, Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Chalabi and the INC
October 31, 1998: Clinton Signs Law Making It US Policy to Remove Hussein in Iraq
President Clinton signs the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (ILA) into law. The act, which passed with overwhelming support from Democrats and Republicans in both the House and Senate, was written by Trent Lott (R-MS) and other Republicans with significant input from Ahmed Chalabi and his aide, Francis Brooke. [US Congress, 10/31/1998 Entity Tags: Patrick Lang, Francis Brooke, Iraqi National Congress, Clinton administration, US Department of State, Trent Lott, Ahmed Chalabi, US Department of Defense, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Chalabi and the INC
Late 1998: ’Downing Plan’ to Overthrow Hussein Government Rejected by General Zinni
A number of neoconservatives, led by retired General Wayne Downing (see 1990-1991) and retired CIA officer Duane “Dewey” Clarridge (see December 25, 1992), use the recently passed Iraqi Liberation Act (ILA—see October 31, 1998) to revive the failed “End Game” coup plans against Saddam Hussein (see November 1993 and March 1995). Both Downing and Clarridge are “military consultants” to Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, who attempted to carry out the coup in 1995 with dismal results. Downing and Clarridge produce an updated version of the INC’s “End Game” scenario, calling it “The Downing Plan.” The Downing scenario varies very little from the original plan. Their plan stipulates that a “crack force” of 5,000 INC fighters, backed up by a detachment of US Special Forces soldiers, could bring down the Iraqi Army. Clarridge later tells reporters: “The idea from the beginning was to encourage defections of Iraqi units. You need to create a nucleus, something for people to defect to. If they could take Basra, it would be all over.” Former Defense Intelligence Agency official Patrick Lang will later write, “It is difficult to understand how a retired four-star Army general [Downing] could believe this to be true.” General Anthony Zinni, commander of CENTCOM, which has operational control of US combat forces in the Middle East, is provided with a copy of Chalabi’s military plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein. “It got me pretty angry,” he later recalls. He warns Congress that Chalabi’s plan is a “pie in the sky, a fairy tale,” and predicts that executing such a poorly envisioned assault would result in a “Bay of Goats.” Chalabi’s INC is nothing more than “some silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London;” neither the INC nor any of the other 91 or so Iraqi opposition groups have anywhere near “the viability to overthrow Saddam.” He tells the New Yorker: “They were saying if you put a thousand troops on the ground Saddam’s regime will collapse, they won’t fight. I said, ‘I fly over them every day, and they shoot at us. We hit them, and they shoot at us again. No way a thousand forces would end it.’ The exile group was giving them inaccurate intelligence. Their scheme was ridiculous.” Zinni earns the enmity of the neoconservative developers of the plan for his stance. [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004; New Yorker, 6/7/2004] Entity Tags: Wayne Downing, Patrick Lang, Saddam Hussein, Ahmed Chalabi, Anthony Zinni, US Congress, Duane Clarridge, Iraqi National Congress Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade, Chalabi and the INC
1999: George W. Bush Hints at Invading Iraq in Future Presidency
Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Mickey Herskowitz Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade, Key Events Related to DSM
February 1999: David Wurmser Urges US to Support Insurgency in Iraq
In his book, Tyranny’s Ally: America’s Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein, David Wurmser of the American Enterprise Institute urges the US to support an insurgency aimed at toppling the Bath’ist government of Saddam Hussein as part of a broader policy to defeat pan-Arabism in Iraq. In its place, the US should encourage the creation of a “loosely unified Iraqi confederal government, shaped around strong sectarian and provincial entities,” Wurmser argues. [Wurmser, 1999, pp. 136-137] What happens in Iraq is vitally important, Wurmser notes, because the country is of extreme strategic importance. “It is a key transportation route, and it is rich in both geographic endowments and human talent,” he explains. “Its location on pathways between Asia and Europe, Africa and Asia, and Europe and Africa makes it an ideal route for armies, pipelines, and trade from both the eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor to the Persian Gulf. Iraq also has large, proven oil reserves, water, and other important resources. Its geographic centrality and abundance of natural advantages alone make the country a regionally important center.” [Wurmser, 1999, pp. 116-117] Entity Tags: David Wurmser Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Motives
February 4, 1999: President Clinton Designates 7 Iraqi Opposition Groups as Eligible for US Funding
President Clinton signs Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 99-13 designating seven Iraqi opposition groups as being eligible to receive US federal funds under the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act (see October 31, 1998). The act stated that the policy of the US should be to support regime change in Iraq. The seven groups include the Iraqi National Accord, the Iraqi National Congress, the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the Movement for Constitutional Monarchy, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. [White House, 2/4/1999] Entity Tags: Kurdistan Democratic Party, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Movement for Constitutional Monarchy, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Iraqi National Congress, Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraqi National Accord Category Tags: Chalabi and the INC, Pre-9/11 Plans for War
April-July 1999: ’Desert Crossing’ War Game Predicts Instability, Potential Chaos if Saddam Hussein Ousted by US
Entity Tags: Anthony Zinni, Saddam Hussein, US Central Command, Bush administration Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Pre-war Planning, Predictions, The Decision to Invade
November 19, 1999: Congress Allocates $10 Million for Iraq Opposition Groups
Congress allocates $10 million “to support efforts to bring about political transition in Iraq, of which not less than $8 million shall be made available only to Iraqi opposition groups designated under the ILA [Iraq Liberation Act of 1998] for political, economic humanitarian, and other activities of such groups, and not more than $2 million may be made available for groups and activities seeking the prosecution of Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi Government officials for war crimes.” President Clinton signs the appropriation bill into law on November 29. [US Congress, 11/29/1999 Entity Tags: William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Iraqi National Congress Category Tags: Chalabi and the INC, Pre-9/11 Plans for War
2000: US Political Parties Advocate Regime Change in Iraq
During the 2000 presidential campaign, the Republican Party calls for “a comprehensive plan for the removal of Saddam Hussein.” Similarly, the Democratic Party’s platform supports using “America’s military might against Iraq when and where it is necessary.” [Republican National Committee, 2000; Democratic National Committee, 2000, pp. 46] Entity Tags: Democratic National Committee, Republican National Committee Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade
2000: Former CIA Director Woolsey Works With Chalabi’s INC
Former CIA director James Woolsey serves as a corporate officer for the Iraqi National Congress Support Foundation which manages the Iraqi National Congress’ US funding. Also during this time, Woolsey and his former law firm, Shea and Gardner, provide the INC and Iraqi exiles with pro bono work. [Knight Ridder, 7/16/2004] Entity Tags: Shea and Gardner, Iraqi National Congress, James Woolsey Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Chalabi and the INC
Spring 2000: Future Bush Adviser: ‘Number One’ Agenda to Overthrow Hussein
Stephen Hadley, a neoconservative foreign affairs analyst who will become the future President Bush’s national security adviser (see November 2, 2004), briefs a group of prominent Republicans on the national security and foreign policy agenda of Bush. Hadley tells the assembled policymakers that Bush’s “number-one foreign policy agenda” will be removing Iraq’s Saddam Hussein from power. Hadley also says Bush will spend little or no time trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. According to Virginia Military Institute professor Clifford Kiracofe, who speaks to many of the policymakers after the meeting, many of them are shocked at the briefing. [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004; Unger, 2007, pp. 175] Entity Tags: Clifford Kiracofe, George W. Bush, Stephen J. Hadley Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade, Decision to Invade Quotes
May 17, 2000: Bush Allegedly Says He Will Take Saddam Hussein Out
Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Osama Siblani Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Key Events Related to DSM, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade
September 2000: Neoconservative Think Tank Writes ‘Blueprint’ for ‘Global Pax Americana’
Entity Tags: Robert Kagan, Robert Martinage, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Robert Killebrew, Peter Rodman, Project for the New American Century, Roger Barnett, Paula J. Dobriansky, Saddam Hussein, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Steve Forbes, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William J. Bennett, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Vin Weber, Stephen A. Cambone, Steve Rosen, Thomas Donnelly, Norman Podhoretz, Phil Meilinger, Midge Decter, Donald Kagan, Donald Rumsfeld, Dov S. Zakheim, Devon Gaffney Cross, Aaron Friedberg, Abram Shulsky, Michael Vickers, Dan Quayle, Eliot A. Cohen, Dan Goure, Alvin Bernstein, Barry Watts, David Epstein, Elliott Abrams, Frank Gaffney, John Ellis (“Jeb”) Bush, James Lasswell, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Mark P. Lagon, Mackubin Owens, Francis Fukuyama, Henry S. Rowen, Gary Schmitt, Fred C. Ikle, Fred Kagan, David Fautua, Hasam Amin, George Weigel Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Key Events Related to DSM, Motives, Pre-9/11 Plans for War
October 5, 2000: Vice Presidential Candidates Advocate Tough Stance Toward Iraq; Cheney Says the Use of Force against Iraq May Be Necessary
During the vice presidential debates, both Joseph Lieberman and Dick Cheney advocate a tough stance toward Saddam Hussein. Lieberman says he and Gore would continue to support Iraqi opposition groups “until the Iraqi people rise up and do what the people of Serbia have done in the last few days: get rid of a despot.” Cheney says it might be necessary “to take military action to forcibly remove Saddam from power.” [CATO Daily Dispatch, 10/6/2000] Entity Tags: Joseph Lieberman, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: The Decision to Invade, Pre-9/11 Plans for War
October 25, 2000: Congress Allocates $25 Million for Iraq Opposition Groups
Congress substantially increases its support for Iraqi opposition organizations, more than doubling the groups’ funding to $25 million for 2001. Of this amount, $18 million is specifically designated for the Iraqi National Congress: $12 million for “food, medicine, and other humanitarian assistance,” and $6 million for the “production and broadcasting inside Iraq of radio and satellite television programming.” In addition, $2 million is allocated for groups and activities seeking the prosecution of Saddam Hussein, while the remaining $5 million is “to support efforts to bring about political transition in Iraq.” [US Congress, 11/6/2000 Entity Tags: Iraqi National Congress, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton Category Tags: Chalabi and the INC, Pre-9/11 Plans for War
November 1, 2000: David Wurmser Urges US and Israel To ‘Strike Fatally’ Against Arab Radicalism
In an op-ed piece published by the Washington Times, David Wurmser of the American Enterprise Institute calls on the US and Israel to “broaden” the conflict in the Middle East. The US, he says, needs “to strike fatally, not merely disarm, the centers of radicalism in the region—the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Tehran, and Gaza” —in order to “reestablish the recognition that fighting with either the United States or Israel is suicidal.” This is necessary, according to Wurmser, because the policies of the US and Israel during the last decade have strengthened Arab radicalism in the Middle East. Wurmser complains that the two countries have mistakenly identified the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and their own behavior as the primary causes of anti-Israeli and anti-American violence instead of focusing on what he claims are the real sources of resentment among Arab leaders—Israeli and American values. “Few anti-American outbursts or Arab-Israeli confrontations initially have much to do with Israel’s or America’s behavior; they have more to do with what these two countries are: free societies,” Wurmser writes. “These upheavals originate in the conditions of Arab politics, specifically in the requirements of tyrannies to seek external conflict to sustain internal repression.… A regime built on opposition to freedom will view free nations, such as the United States and Israel, as mortal threats.” The US and Israeli failure to grasp this reality, along with the Clinton administration’s reluctance to remove Saddam from power, according to Wurmser, has only empowered Arab radicalism. The answer, he argues, is to forcefully reassert US and Israeli power. [Washington Times, 11/1/2000] Entity Tags: David Wurmser Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War
December 19, 2000: Clinton Tells Bush His Top Priority Should Be Bin Laden; Bush Says It’s Saddam Hussein Instead
Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade
Before January 20, 2001: Pre-Inaugural Discussions about Removing Saddam Hussein
There are discussions among future members of the Bush administration, including Bush himself, about making the removal of Saddam Hussein a top priority once they are in office. After the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke will say that the Bush team had been planning regime change in Iraq since before coming to office, with newly named Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (see December 28, 2000) and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz (see January 11, 2001) taking the lead. “Since the beginning of the administration, indeed well before, they had been pressing for a war with Iraq,” he will write in his book Against All Enemies. “My friends in the Pentagon had been telling me that the word was we would be invading Iraq sometime in 2002.” [Clarke, 2004, pp. 7-9; Unger, 2007, pp. 192] During an appearance on Good Morning America on March 22, 2004, he will say, “[T]hey had been planning to do something about Iraq from before the time they came into office.” [Good Morning America, 3/22/2004] Evidence of pre-inaugural discussions on regime change in Iraq comes from other sources as well. Imam Sayed Hassan al-Qazwini, who heads the Islamic Center of America in Detroit, will tell the New York Times in early 2004 that he spoke with Bush about removing Saddam Hussein six or seven times, both before and after the 2000 elections. [New York Times, 1/12/2004] In 2007, author Craig Unger will write: “In certain respects, their actions were a replay of the 1976 Team B experiment (see Early 1976 and November 1976), with one very important difference. This time it wasn’t just a bunch of feverish ideologues presenting a theoretical challenge to the CIA. This time Team B controlled the entire executive branch of the United States.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 192] Entity Tags: Richard A. Clarke, Imam Sayed Hassan al-Qazwini, Craig Unger, Saddam Hussein, ’Team B’, George W. Bush, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Key Events Related to DSM, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade
After January 20, 2001: Cheney to Push for Invasion of Iraq for Political Reasons, Personal Vendettas
Vice President Cheney takes office with every intention to push President Bush into invading Iraq. According to an unnamed former subordinate of Cheney’s while Cheney was secretary of defense (see March 20, 1989 and After), Cheney wants to “do Iraq” because he thinks it can be done quickly and easily, and because “the US could do it essentially alone… and that an uncomplicated, total victory would set the stage for a landslide re-election in 2004 and decades of Republican Party domination.” Cheney believes that overthrowing Saddam Hussein “would ‘finish’ the undone work of the first Gulf War and settle scores once and for all with a cast of characters deeply resented by the vice president: George H. W. Bush, Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft, and Jim Baker.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 182] Entity Tags: George Herbert Walker Bush, Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, George W. Bush, James Baker, Saddam Hussein Category Tags: Motives, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade
Shortly after January 20, 2001: Pentagon Analysts Replaced With Neoconservative Ideologues
Shortly after George W. Bush is inaugurated, “[k]ey personnel, long-time civilian professionals” at the Pentagon’s Near East South Asia (NESA) desk are moved or replaced with people from neoconservative think tanks. [American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] Joe McMillan, the Office Director, is moved to a new location outside of the Pentagon, which according to Karen Kwiatkowski, who works at the NESA desk, is odd because “the whole reason for the Office Director being a permanent civilian (occasionally military) professional is to help bring the new appointee up to speed, ensure office continuity, and act as a resource relating to regional histories and policies.” [American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004; Salon, 3/10/2004] Larry Hanauer, who has long been at the Israel-Syria-Lebanon desk and who is known to be “even-handed with Israel,” is replaced by David Schenker of the Washington Institute. [American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] Other veteran NESA employees who are banished include James Russell, who has served as the country director for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and Marybeth McDevitt, the country director for Egypt. [Mother Jones, 1/2004] Entity Tags: Marybeth McDevitt, David Schenker, Larry Hanauer, James Russell, Karen Kwiatkowski, Joe McMillan Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Politicization of Intelligence, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Office of Special Plans
January 22, 2001 and After: Neoconservatives Begin Push for Invasion of Iraq
An orchestrated push in the media begins to make the case for the need to invade Iraq. The San Diego Union-Tribune reprints a Weekly Standard article by William Kristol and Robert Kagan that tells readers (after comparing President Bush favorably to Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Harry Truman, and lauding Bush’s “steely determination”) that US military action “could well be necessary to bring Saddam down.” They write: “At some point, Bush could well find himself confronted by an Iraq armed with weapons of mass destruction. During these past few years, it was relatively easy for congressional Republicans to call for arming and funding the Iraqi opposition. That remains a good idea. But the more sober of Bush’s advisers, like Robert Zoellick and Paul Wolfowitz (see February 18, 1992 and February 27, 2001), have recognized that this alone will not do the trick. Some use of American military force, both from the air and on the ground, could well be necessary to bring Saddam down, no matter how wonderfully the Iraqi opposition performs. Whether he chooses it or not, Bush may quickly be faced with the same decision his father had to make in 1990. He has in his cabinet at least one person who counseled inaction the last time [referring to Secretary of State Colin Powell]. If the crisis comes, Bush, like his father, will not be able to rely only on the judgment of the men and women around him: He will have to act from his own instincts and his own courage.” [Weekly Standard, 1/22/2001; Unger, 2007, pp. 206] In the coming weeks, an onslaught of print and television op-eds and commentaries, some from Bush administration officials, will advocate the overthrow of Hussein (see February 27, 2001, February 16, 2001, April 9, 2001, and July 30, 2001). Entity Tags: Robert Kagan, William Kristol Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Media Coverage, Motives, Politicization of Intelligence, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Public Opinion on Iraqi Threat
January 29, 2001: Bush Tells Muslim Leader Hussein Must Go
Imam Sayed Hassan al-Qazwini, who heads the Islamic Center of America in Detroit, one of the nation’s largest mosques, meets with President Bush in the White House about the administration’s policy towards Iraq. The president says he supports a policy aimed at removing Saddam Hussein from power, though he does not discuss by what means. “No method was discussed at all,” al-Qazwini will tell the New York Times two years later. “It was a general desire for regime change.” He will also tell the newspaper that he had spoken with Bush about removing Saddam Hussein a total of six or seven times, both before and after the 2000 elections. [New York Times, 1/12/2004] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Imam Sayed Hassan al-Qazwini Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade
January 30, 2001: First National Security Council Meeting Focuses on Iraq and Israel, Not Terrorism
The Bush White House holds its first National Security Council meeting. The focus is on Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [Bamford, 2004, pp. 261] This meeting sets the tone for how President Bush intends to handle foreign affairs. Counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke wants to focus on the threat from al-Qaeda and Islamist terrorism, especially in light of the recent attack on the USS Cole (see October 12, 2000). But Bush isn’t interested in terrorism. [Unger, 2007, pp. 201] Entity Tags: Richard B. Myers, Hugh Shelton, Paul O’Neill, George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, George J. Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, Craig Unger, Iraqi National Congress Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Key Events Related to DSM, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade
February 2001: Bush: If US Determines that Iraq Is Developing WMD, ‘We Will Take the Appropriate Action’
President Bush hosts British Prime Minister Tony Blair at Camp David. Iraq is on the agenda. Bush and Blair tell reporters that they want to restructure the sanctions on Iraq through the United Nations, using what the White House calls “smart sanctions”—sanctions that are designed to constrain the Iraqi government without harming the Iraqi citizenry. The new sanctions are primarily aimed at tightening controls on “dual-use” goods, items that can be used for both civilian and military purposes, and to keep the regime from getting illicit funds from oil smuggling. Bush says: “A change in sanctions should not in any way, shape, or form, embolden Saddam Hussein. He has got to understand that we are going to watch him carefully and, if we catch him developing weapons of mass destruction, we’ll take the appropriate action. And if we catch him threatening his neighbors we will take the appropriate action.” In 2008, former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan will write: “Saddam was viewed more as a ‘problem’ to deal with than a ‘grave and gathering danger’ in the early days. Talk centered on if he was developing WMD, not that he was developing them.” [McClellan, 2008, pp. 93-94] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Scott McClellan, United Nations, Tony Blair Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Pre-9/11 Plans for War
February 2001 and After: Bush Administration Begins Planning for Regime Change in Iraq
“Within weeks” of taking office, the Bush administration begins planning for a post-Saddam Iraqi government. The State Department convenes a series of secret discussions attended by prominent Iraqi expatriates, many with ties to US industries, to plan for a post-Saddam Iraq. The meetings are held in the home of Falah Aljibury, an adviser to OPEC, Goldman Sachs, and Amerada Hess’s oil trading arm. He also served as Ronald Reagan’s backchannel to Saddam Hussein during the 1980s. According to Aljibury, the discussion group, led by Pamela Quanrud, an NSC economics expert, quickly evolves into an “oil group.” The plan they develop is said to represent the views of the oil industry and the State Department. According to the plan, Saddam Hussein would be replaced by some former Baathist general, while the rest of the government would continue to function as before. One of the candidates that is considered to head post-Saddam Iraq is Gen. Nizar Khazrahi (see Between February 2001 and February 2003), who is under house arrest in Denmark awaiting trial for war crimes. “The petroleum industry, the chemical industry, the banking industry—they’d hoped that Iraq would go for a revolution like in the past and government was shut down for two or three days,” Aljibury will later tell reporter Greg Palast. “You have martial law… and say Iraq is being liberated and everybody stay where they are… Everything as is.” [BBC Newsnight, 3/17/2005; Democracy Now!, 3/21/2005; Harper's, 4/2005, pp. 74-76] Entity Tags: Falah Aljibury, Pamela Quanrud, Bush administration, Nizar Khazrahi Category Tags: Motives, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Pre-war Planning
February 1, 2001: Rumsfeld Wants to Get Rid of Hussein in Iraq; Envisions Iraq After Hussein Is Gone
The Bush White House holds its second National Security Council meeting. Like the first meeting (see January 30, 2001), the issue of regime change in Iraq is a central topic. [CBS News, 1/10/2004; New York Times, 1/12/2004] Officials discuss a memo titled “Plan for post-Saddam Iraq,” which talks about troop requirements, establishing war crimes tribunals, and divvying up Iraq’s oil wealth. [ [Sources: Paul O’Neill] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld interrupts Colin Powell’s discussion of UN-based sanctions against Iraq, saying, “Sanctions are fine. But what we really want to discuss is going after Saddam.” He continues, “Imagine what the region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that’s aligned with US interests. It would change everything in the region and beyond it. It would demonstrate what US policy is all about.” [Suskind, 2004, pp. 85-86 Sources: Paul O’Neill] According to Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, Rumsfeld talks at the meeting “in general terms about post-Saddam Iraq, dealing with the Kurds in the north, the oil fields, the reconstruction of the country’s economy, and the ‘freeing of the Iraqi people.’” [New York Times, 1/12/2004 Sources: Paul O’Neill] Other people, in addition to O’Neill, Bush, and Rumsfeld, who are likely in attendance include Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B. Myers. [US President, 2/13/2001] Entity Tags: Paul O’Neill, George W. Bush, George J. Tenet, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard B. Myers Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Pre-war Planning, The Decision to Invade, Key Events Related to DSM
February 21, 2001: US and British Forces Bomb Iraqi Military Facilities, Leading to Conflict within US Military Leadership
A joint US-British air force strike team bombs 20 radar and command centers inside Iraq, enforcing the UN no-fly zones in the largest air strikes within Iraq in two years. While the White House is informed of the strikes by a general from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is livid because he feels he hasn’t been given enough information about the strikes quickly enough. Rumsfeld’s information comes to him, by established law and protocol, through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Henry Shelton; thus it could be hours before Rumsfeld learns of such events. Saying, “I’m the secretary of defense. I’m in the chain of command,” Rumsfeld decides to upend the entire system and ensure that he, not Shelton, will be informed first about any such operations. Rumsfeld presses Shelton for information about the reporting of the air strikes: who had selected those targets and why, who had briefed, who had been briefed, and most importantly, why wasn’t Rumsfeld consulted? CNN had reported air strikes in Baghdad, though the actual bases struck were not in the city itself; it looked for a moment if the US had just declared unilateral war on Iraq. Rumsfeld feels misled and ignored. He is the one in the chain of command, he insists, he is the one reporting to the president, so he should be informed first. Shelton replies that he has to know what’s going on, to know what details to press for and what questions to ask, in order to properly inform the Secretary of Defense, who can then properly inform the president. Rumsfeld insists on being informed before Shelton, and demands a top-to-bottom review of the procedures involving the National Military Command Center (NMCC) and detailed timelines of each incident where Shelton was informed before Rumsfeld. [Woodward, 2006, pp. 22-25] Entity Tags: Joint Chiefs of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Hugh Shelton, US Department of Defense, National Military Command Center Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Pre-war Attacks against Iraq
Spring 2001: White House Pressures CIA to Drop Objection to Chalabi
During a White House meeting, Bush administration officials discuss new proposals on how to undermine Saddam Hussein. At one point during the meeting, Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley tells Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin that the CIA needs to stop bad-mouthing Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi so the Bush administration can work with Chalabi to overthrow the Iraqi government. McLaughlin reportedly makes it clear to Hadley that the agency will not undermine White House efforts to work with Chalabi. Hadley’s pressure on the CIA produces the intended results. Though the CIA will never work directly with Chalabi, the CIA will nonetheless allow the Pentagon to disseminate intelligence reports to other US intelligence agencies based on information from Iraqi defectors supplied by Chalabi’s organization, the Iraqi National Congress. One CIA official later tells author James Risen that the White House message to drop its objections to Chalabi was sent to the CIA “a thousand times, in a thousand different ways.” [Risen, 2006, pp. 183-184] Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, John E. McLaughlin, Ahmed Chalabi, Stephen J. Hadley Category Tags: Politicization of Intelligence, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade
Between March 2001 and May 2001: Richard Clarke: Bush Officials Discuss Creating Casus Belli for War with Iraq
Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke later says that sometime between March and May, Bush administration officials discussed creating a casus belli for war with Iraq. In a 2007 interview with radio show host Jon Elliot, Clarke says: “Prior to 9/11 a number of people in the White House were saying to me you know this—this administration, particularly Cheney, but also Bush [and] people like Wolfowitz in the Pentagon, are really intent on going to war with Iraq. And this was the whispered conversations in the National Security Council staff.… Early, early on in the administration people I knew and trusted in the administration were saying to me, ‘You know. They’re really going to do it. They are going to go to war with Iraq.’ And I was flabbergasted. Why would you want to do that of all the things in the world that one could choose to do?… And how are we going to do it? How are we going to cause that provocation? And there was some discussion of ‘Well maybe [we’ll] keep flying aircraft over Iraq and maybe one day one of them will be shot down.’… And some of the talk I was hearing—in the March, April, May timeframe—‘Maybe we’ll do something that is so provocative and do it in such a way that our aircraft will be shot down.’ And then we’ll have an excuse to go to war with Iraq.” [Jon Elliot Show, 1/11/2007 Sources: Richard A. Clarke] Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, George W. Bush, Richard A. Clarke Timeline Tags: Alleged Use of False Flag Attacks, Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade
March 2001: US Begins Giving Weapons Training to Members of INC
Retired US soldiers give weapons training to members of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the Iraqi opposition group led by Ahmed Chalabi. The five-day training session takes place in College Station, Texas, and is said to only be the first round of training. The INC has a contract with the Guidry Group, a consulting firm comprised of ex-secret service agents, to learn diplomatic security. Previously, the US backed training for the INC, but limited it only to “non-lethal” activities such as public relations, emergency medical care, and war crimes investigations. But with the Bush administration newly in power, approval has been given to let the INC learn how to use 12-gauge shotguns, pistols, Kalishnikov rifles, and other fire-arms. Retired Gen. Wayne Downing says, “This is significant because this is the first lethal training. It is designed to protect, so the significance is that this is the first time they are being trained to do anything on this level.” Downing, who has been advising the INC for three years, calls the training “a drop in the bucket.” He adds, “This is not the training they will need to put together a liberation army. There you would need individual training, basic training, weapons training, involving anti tank weapons, machine guns, rockets and that sort of thing.” The Washington Post will later call Downing the INC’s “mentor and biggest cheerleader.” [United Press International, 2/12/2001; Washington Post, 11/20/2001] Entity Tags: Ahmed Chalabi, Wayne Downing, Guidry Group, Iraqi National Congress Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade
March 2001: Cheney’s Energy Task Force Eyes Iraq’s Oil Reserves
Cheney’s Energy Task Force authors a variety of documents relating to the oil industries of Iraq, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. [Judicial Watch, 7/17/2003; CBS News, 1/10/2004; New York Times, 1/12/2004] Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: The Decision to Invade, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Motives
March, 2001: Perle Says Hussein Has Weapons of Mass Destruction
Defense Policy Board chairman and prominent neoconservative Richard Perle tells the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “Does Saddam [Hussein] now have weapons of mass destruction? Sure he does. We know he has chemical weapons. We know he has biological weapons.…How far he’s gone on the nuclear-weapons side I don’t think we really know. My guess is it’s further than we think. It’s always further than we think, because we limit ourselves, as we think about this, to what we’re able to prove and demonstrate…. And, unless you believe that we’ve uncovered everything, you have to assume there is more than we’re able to report.” Perle fails to offer any evidence of his claims to the senators, and fails to provide evidence from UN inspectors that shows virtually all of Iraq’s WMD stockpiles and programs have long since been destroyed. [Hersh, 2004, pp. 209-210] Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Saddam Hussein Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Pre-war Attacks against Iraq
April 12, 2001: Report on Energy Security Argues US Needs to Review Policy on Iraq
A report commissioned by former US Secretary of State James Baker and the Council on Foreign Relations, titled “Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century,” is completed and submitted to Vice President Dick Cheney. The report was drafted by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Edward L. Morse, an energy industry analyst, chaired the project, and Amy Myers Jaffe was the project’s director. The paper urges the US to formulate a comprehensive, integrated strategic energy policy to address the current energy crisis, which it attributes to infrastructural restraints, rapid global economic expansion, and the presence of obstacles to foreign investment in the oil-rich Middle East. The report says the world’s supply of oil is not a factor in the crisis. “The reasons for the energy challenge have nothing to do with the global hydrocarbon resource base…. The world will not run short of hydrocarbons in the foreseeable future,” the paper says. One of the report’s recommendations is to “[r]eview policies toward Iraq” with the ultimate goal of stemming the tide of anti-Americanism in the Middle-East and “eas[ing] Iraqi oil-field investment restrictions.” Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, remains a “destabilizing influence… to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East.” It also notes, “Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets.” Therefore, the report says, the “United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq, including military, energy, economic, and political/diplomatic assessments” and work with key allies to develop a new integrated strategy toward Iraq. Key elements of the new policy should include narrowing the focus of sanctions and using diplomatic means to enforce existing UN resolutions. [University, 4/2/2001 Entity Tags: Council on Foreign Relations, James A. Baker, Edward L. Morse, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Amy Myers Jaffe, James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Motives, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade, Key Events Related to DSM
Excerpts
May 2001: Feith, Perle, and Wolfowitz Discuss Iraq Invasion; Scowcroft Initially Favorable
According to FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, “Four months before 9/11”, FBI monitoring overhears Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz “discussing with the Turkish ambassador in Washington an arrangement whereby the US would invade Iraq and divide the country.… They were negotiating what Turkey required in exchange for allowing an attack from Turkish soil.” National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, later a critic of the Iraq War, is initially in favor of the plan, but will later drop his support when it becomes clear Turkish demands for control of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq will not be granted. [The American Conservative, 11/1/2009] Entity Tags: Sibel Edmonds, Brent Scowcroft, Douglas Feith, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Paul Wolfowitz Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War
Late July or Early August 2001: US Authorities Look into Theory that Iraq Had Role in 1993 WTC Bombing
Entity Tags: Ramzi Yousef, American Enterprise Institute, Abdul Basit, Laurie Mylroie, Paul Wolfowitz Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War Summer 2001: IAEA Scientist: US ‘Wants to Attack’ Iraq
After CIA analyst Joe Turner’s presentation to UN atomic energy scientists (see Late July 2001), one of the scientists calls David Albright, a nuclear physicist who runs the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, and warns him that the “people across the river [i.e., the CIA] are trying to start a war. They are really beating the drum. They want to attack.” [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 37] Entity Tags: David Albright, Institute for Science and International Security, Central Intelligence Agency Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade, Aluminum Tubes Allegation
August 6, 2001: Perle’s Concern About Iraq, North Korea, and Iran Before 9/11 Becomes Axis of Evil Afterward
Richard Perle, head of the Defense Policy Board and foreign policy adviser to Bush, is asked about new challenges now that the Cold War is over. He cites three: “We’re concerned about Saddam Hussein, We’re concerned about the North Koreans, about some future Iranian government that may have the weapon they’re now trying so hard to acquire…” [Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 8/6/2001] Note that these three nations are the same three named in Bush’s famous January 2002 “axis of evil” speech (see January 29, 2002). [US President, 2/4/2002] Entity Tags: Richard Perle, North Korea, Iran, Saddam Hussein Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War September 2, 2001: Bush Administration Enthusiastic to ‘Take Down Saddam Once and For All’Time magazine reports, “Enthusiasm is building inside the Administration to take down Saddam once and for all. Powell too would love to see Saddam [Hussein] unhorsed, says an official at State. ‘But you need a serious plan that’s doable. The question is how many lives and resources you have to risk.’” Powell is said to have doubts about how to remove Hussein, and calls such an idea still “hypothetical.” But Time notes that “plenty of others on the Bush team are gung-ho.” [Time, 9/2/2001] Entity Tags: Colin Powell, Saddam Hussein, Bush administration Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade Mid-September, 2001: Cheney and Rumsfeld Create ‘Cabal’ to Influence Foreign PolicyShortly after the 9/11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz create a secretive, ad hoc intelligence bureau within the Pentagon that they mockingly dub “The Cabal.” This small but influential group of neoconservatives is tasked with driving US foreign policy and intelligence reporting towards the goal of promoting the invasion of Iraq. To this end, the group—which later is folded into the slightly more official Office of Special Plans (OSP) (see 2002-2003)—gathers and interprets raw intelligence data for itself, refusing the participation of the experts in the CIA and DIA, and reporting, massaging, manipulating, and sometimes falsifying that information to suit their ends. [New Yorker, 5/12/2003] In October 2005, Larry Wilkerson, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, will say of the Cabal and the OSP (see October 2005), “What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.” [Financial Times, 10/20/2005] Entity Tags: Thomas Franks, Paul Wolfowitz, Office of Special Plans, “The Cabal”, Central Intelligence Agency, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Colin Powell, Douglas Feith, Lawrence Wilkerson, Defense Intelligence Agency, Donald Rumsfeld Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran, Domestic Propaganda Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties, Media Coverage, Politicization of Intelligence, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Pre-war Planning, Propaganda, The Decision to Invade, Aluminum Tubes Allegation, Poisons and Gases, Office of Special Plans, Alleged WMDs, Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties, Media Coverage, Politicization of Intelligence, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Pre-war Planning, Propaganda, The Decision to Invade, Aluminum Tubes Allegation, Poisons and Gases, Office of Special Plans September 17, 2001: Republican Senator: US Needs to Foment Regime Change in Middle Eastern Countries
Senator George Allen (R-VA) says on CNN that the US needs to consider fomenting regime change in Iraq, Iran, and Syria. [Unger, 2007, pp. 217] Entity Tags: George F. Allen Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade, Democracy Rhetoric
Autumn 2002: Anthrax Attacks Suspect Hatfill Helps Train US Special Forces while FBI Investigates Him
In autumn 2002, US Delta Force units train on a mobile biological weapons factory to prepare them for dealing with mobile biological weapons factories in Iraq. The factory is just like the factories the US accuses the Iraqi government of having but which it does not have. The chief designer of the factory is Steven Hatfill, who is also the FBI’s main suspect at the time for the 2001 anthrax attacks (see October 5-November 21, 2001). Hatfill began designing the factory while working for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a contractor for the US military and the CIA. He begins gathering parts to build it in 2000, and construction began in September 2001, at a metalworking plant near Fort Detrick, Maryland. SAIC fired him in March 2002, after he failed to get a high-level security clearance and he came under suspicion for the October 2001 anthrax attacks. But Hatfill continues to work on the half-built factory on his own, for no pay, until it is finished later that year. Once it is done, Hatfill continues to advise the US military about it, and sometimes supervises Delta Force training exercises on it at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. However, at the same time, the Justice Department and the FBI is heavily investigating Hatfill for the anthrax attacks, and there is a conflict between agencies over Hatfill’s continued role with the factory. The FBI wants to confiscate the factory, but the military will not give it up. Its equipment includes a fermenter, a centrifuge, and “a mill for grinding clumps of anthrax into the best size for penetrating human lungs,” according to experts familiar with it. However, its components are not connected and it is never used to make lethal germs. The FBI examines the unit but finds no anthrax spores or any other evidence linking it to the anthrax attacks. [New York Times, 7/2/2003] Hatfill will be cleared of any connection to the anthrax attacks in 2008 (see June 27, 2008). Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Steven Hatfill, Delta Force Timeline Tags: 2001 Anthrax Attacks Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Alleged WMDs, 2001 Anthrax Attacks September 2002: ’Office of Special Plans’ Created; ‘Stovepipes’ Questionable Intelligence Reports to Office of Vice President
Wikeleaks Exposed Bush 1 approved Saddam ‘s invasion of Iraq, then turned tables and made Saddam a neo Hitler. Ron Paul addressed congress about this crime and the start of the 20 years war. More than one million Iraqi deaths since US invasion As part of its campaign to justify a long-term US occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration has increasingly resorted to warning of chaos and even genocide in the wake of a withdrawal of American troops. But a new report suggests that something akin to genocide is already taking place, under American auspices. The British polling agency ORB reported Thursday that the death tool in Iraq since the 2003 US invasion has passed the one million mark. 
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ORB (Opinion Research Business), which has conducted polls in Iraq since 2005, released the findings of a survey of 1,461 adults across the country. Among other questions, it asked: “How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (i.e., as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age)? Please note that I mean those who were actually living under your roof.” Of those responding, 78 percent said their households had experienced no violent deaths, 16 percent had experienced one death, 5 percent two deaths, 1 percent three deaths or more. Given the number of households in the country, 4,050,597 according to 2005 census figures, this works out to nearly 1.2 million deaths. The survey found that 48 percent of the violent deaths were due to gunshot wounds, 20 percent to car bombs, 9 percent to aerial bombardment, 6 percent to other ordnance or explosions, and 6 percent to accidents.
The figure for aerial bombardments is particularly noteworthy since such deaths—numbering well over 100,000 according to the ORB study—go virtually unreported in the American media. This is doubtless because such killings are entirely the work of the US and British occupation forces, the only ones equipped with helicopters and warplanes. The ORB survey found a far higher death rate than the figures released by Western media outlets, the US-established Iraqi government in Baghdad, or the United Nations. But it dovetails with the public health survey conducted last year by a team of scientists from Johns Hopkins University and published in the British medical journal Lancet, which estimated the death toll (as of early 2006, nearly 18 months ago), at about 665,000. The Lancet figures were denounced by the US and Iraqi governments and dismissed by the American media, and the ORB figures are likely to face the same fate. The study’s findings were reported only in passing in Friday’s daily newspapers, most prominently by the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe, not at all by the New York Times or Washington Post. The ORB survey was based on face-to-face interviews conducted between August 12 and August 19 among a nationally representative sample of 1,720 adults (of whom 1,461 responded), with a standard margin of error of 2.4 percent. Random sampling was used to select those interviewed in 15 of Iraq’s 18 provinces. For security reasons, no interviews were conducted in Al Anbar or Karbala provinces, or in the province of Irbil, where Kurdish authorities refused to allow field interviews. Since Anbar and Karbala are among the bloodiest battlefields of the war, and Irbil among the quietest, the exclusion of the three provinces would more likely to lead to an underestimation of the death toll than an exaggeration. The ORB study was made public on the same day that President Bush went on national television to deliver a report on conditions in Iraq that was nothing short of delusional. With a million Iraqis dead, a million wounded, and four to five million displaced, Bush hailed the return of “normal life” to the devastated country. “Sectarian killings are down, and ordinary life is beginning to return,” he said. Thursday, January 18, 2007The war in Iraq is the war of President Bush1999: George W. Bush Hints at Invading Iraq in Future Presidency
Bush calls for permanent US military occupation of Iraq in nationally televised address
Dedicated To The American Soldier, the men and women in uniform in the service of our country overseas.
"US and the Triumph of Unilateralism,"Asia Times, Sept. 10, 2002 "George Bush and the World,"New York Review of Books, Sept. 26, 2002 issue "The Next World Order,"The New Yorker, March 25, 2002 "Saddam in the Crosshairs,"Village Voice, Nov. 21-27, 2001 "Rebuilding America's Defenses,"Project for a New Century, September 2000 "Statement of Principles,"Project for a New American Century, June 3, 1997 "Fortunes of war await Bush's circle after attacks on Iraq,"The Independent (UK), Sept. 15, 2002 "Don't Mention the O-Word,"The Economist, Sept. 12, 2002 "Backing on Iraq? Let's Make a Deal,"Los Angeles Times, Sept. 13, 2002 "In Iraqi War Scenario, Oil is a Key Issue,"Washington Post, Sept. 15, 2002 "Cronies in Arms,"New York Times, Sept. 17, 2002 "Questions That Won't Be Asked About Iraq,"U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, Republican, Texas, Sept. 10, 2002 "Bombs Will Deepen Iraq's Nightmare: An Iraqi Dissident Speaks,"The Guardian, Sept. 17, 2002 "Looking War in the Face,"Boston Globe, Sept. 10, 2002 "Iraqgate,"Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 1993 Arbusto, HARKEN, Spectrum-7, Aloha -- Every company Bush W ever touched, he's run into the ground. Yet Poppy's family and friends, including James R Bath, the bin Mahfouz and bin Ladens, always help him out. No wonder he went off thinking of ENRON, Kenny Boy and all the possibilities.
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I am only showing all the sides of the spectrum. To be silent, in view of what is happening to our country is a crime. I have to speak up, not only because it is my right, but I do not want to be an enabler to the waste being done to my fellow citizen and to the world. The WTC event was capitalized by the Bush Administration's false justifications for war in Iraq within the larger context of a two-decade struggle by neoconservatives to dramatically increase military spending in the wake of the Cold War, and to expand American power globally by means of military force. The plans for the attack on Iraq, was made 2 years in advance and decisions were already made by Bush and company to invade before 2003, the only problem was the selling of the war to the American people. Thereafter, the congress, the people got duped into believing Iraq was a threat and a terrorist base. Again, Mr. Bush is doing the same kind of propaganda to convince the American public in the expansion of troop strength in Iraq. This may touch a wider war that will include Iran and Syria. Meanwhile, preparations are underway towards that objective. There are now two carrier battle groups in that area, instead of just one in the initial invasion previously. A navy admiral commands all the troops in that area, instead of the two battle tested field army or marine generals. Who needs a navy admiral in a land war, except for a wider war. Something big is in the works and being cooked as we speak. Those carrier battle groups represent a projection of power in a wider theater of war, there is a sinister plan in effect and could be the possible invasion of Iran and Syria. We do not need another war. The attack on Iraq caused the lives of over 1,200,000 civilians. The destruction of a sovereign country, that was not a threat to us. The total anarchy in Iraq that lead to a civil war, the blood and lives of our troops, the debasing of our economy only for what, the naivete of this president of the difference between Sunnis and Shiites (that Saddam was the stabilizing factor that prevented both sects from killing each other) or there is his axe to grind against Saddam, or is it the oil.........................ASC If you're interested in knowing this other truth, horrible as it is, then I suggest you watch this and other videos. These atrocities, will continue until the American people wake up and put a stop to this evil. The first step is to understand and have an open mind that this could really be happening. 1999: George W. Bush Hints at Invading Iraq in Future Presidency Context of 'October 14, 2003: Libby Interviewed by FBI concerning Plame Wilson Leak'This is a scalable context timeline. It contains events related to the event October 14, 2003: Libby Interviewed by FBI concerning Plame Wilson Leak. You can narrow or broaden the context of this timeline by adjusting the zoom level. The lower the scale, the more relevant the items on average will be, while the higher the scale, the less relevant the items, on average, will be.y Outs CIA Official to New York Times Reporter
Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, “outs” a covert CIA agent to a reporter. Libby tells New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who has been a reliable outlet for administration leaks and disinformation (see December 20, 2001, August 2002, and May 1, 2003), that Valerie Plame Wilson is a CIA official. Plame Wilson is a covert CIA officer currently working at CIA headquarters on WMD issues in the Middle East. More importantly for Libby, she is the husband of former US ambassador Joseph Wilson, who went to Niger to verify the administration’s claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium there (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), and who has become an outspoken critic of the administration’s war policies both on television and in print (see July 6, 2003). Entity Tags: Judith Miller, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Joseph C. Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson, Central Intelligence Agency Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003: Libby Again Tells New York Times Reporter that Plame Wilson Is CIA Officer
Entity Tags: Jennifer Mayfield, Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control, Judith Miller, Central Intelligence Agency, Abdul Qadeer Khan, Bush administration, Valerie Plame Wilson, Patrick Fitzgerald, Joseph C. Wilson, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, David S. Addington Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
July 10 or 11, 2003: Libby, Russert Speak; Libby Will Claim Russert Informed Him of Plame Wilson’s CIA Status
Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, and NBC News reporter and anchor Tim Russert speak on the telephone. Libby wants to complain to Russert about an MSNBC talk show host, Chris Matthews, and Matthews’s coverage of the Iraq-Niger controversy (see July 10, 2003). Libby will later claim that, during the conversation, Russert informs him that Valerie Plame Wilson, the wife of war critic Joseph Wilson, is a CIA officer. “All the reporters know” that Plame Wilson is a CIA officer, Libby will testify that Russert says. Russert will testify that he and Libby never discuss Plame Wilson (see November 24, 2003 and February 7-8, 2007), and at the time he has no knowledge of her CIA status. [US Department of Justice, 3/5/2004 Entity Tags: Robert Novak, Chris Matthews, Karl Rove, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Valerie Plame Wilson, Tim Russert Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003: Libby Confirms Plame Wilson’s CIA Status to Time Reporter
Lewis Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, confirms to Time reporter Matthew Cooper that Valerie Plame Wilson is a CIA officer. Libby has been in regular communication with senior White House officials, including political strategist Karl Rove, to discuss how to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, war critic Joseph Wilson. On July 11, the two spoke privately after a staff meeting. According to later testimony from both Rove and Libby, Rove told Libby that he had spoken to columnist Robert Novak on July 9 (see July 8 or 9, 2003), and that Novak would soon write a column about Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003). Today, Libby joins Cheney and others flying to and from Norfolk, Virginia, aboard Air Force Two; on the return trip, Libby discusses with the others what he should say in response to media inquiries about Wilson’s recent column (see July 6, 2003 and July 12, 2003). After returning to Washington, Libby calls Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine, who has already learned from Rove that Plame Wilson is a CIA officer (see July 8, 2003 and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). According to Libby’s 2005 indictment (see October 28, 2005), “Libby confirmed to Cooper, without elaboration or qualification, that he had heard this information, too,” that Plame Wilson was CIA. [National Journal, 3/30/2006] Libby speaks “on the record” to deny that Cheney had anything to do with the CIA’s decision to send Joseph Wilson to Niger (see July 6, 2003, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, and July 8, 2003). On background, Cooper asks Libby if he knows anything about Wilson’s wife being responsible for sending him to Niger. Libby replies, “Yeah, I’ve heard that too.” [Cooper, 7/12/2003 Entity Tags: Matthew Cooper, Jennifer Mayfield, Joseph C. Wilson, Cathie Martin, Bush administration, Karl Rove, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003: New York Times Reporter Told of Plame Wilson’s Identity for Third Time
New York Times reporter Judith Miller again speaks to Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, in regards to the Iraqi WMD controversy and the recent op-ed by former ambassador Joseph Wilson (see July 6, 2003). In Miller’s notes, she writes the words “Victoria Wilson.” Libby has twice informed Miller that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, is a CIA agent (see June 23, 2003 and 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003). Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Judith Miller, Valerie Plame Wilson, Joseph C. Wilson, Central Intelligence Agency Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
Late September or Early October, 2003: Libby Tells Cheney that He Learned Identity of Plame Wilson from Him
In the days after the Justice Department begins probing the Plame Wilson identity leak (see September 26, 2003 and September 29, 2003), Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, finds a reference in his notes that indicates he learned from Cheney that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA agent. According to his later testimony, Libby immediately goes to Cheney with the notes, in defiance of instructions from the FBI and the White House counsel’s office not to discuss the matter with colleagues (see September 29-30, 2003). “It turns out that I have a note that I had heard about” Plame Wilson’s CIA identity “from you,” Libby tells Cheney. Libby will later testify that Cheney “didn’t say much” in response. “You know, he said something about, ‘From me?’ something like that, and tilted his head, something he does commonly, and that was that.” [National Journal, 2/19/2007; Associated Press, 11/2/2009] Libby tells Cheney that his public story is that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from NBC bureau chief Tim Russert (see July 10 or 11, 2003). Cheney knows that the Russert story is untrue, but does nothing to discourage Libby from telling that story to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and a grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). Cheney also encourages White House press secretary Scott McClellan to publicly exonerate and defend Libby (see October 1, 2003, October 4, 2003, October 4, 2003, and October 5, 2003), who complains that the White House is not doing enough to protect him. In 2007, law professor and former federal prosecutor Dan Richman will say that any criminal interpretation of Cheney’s reaction to Libby’s story depends on the exact words the two men exchanged, and exactly what Cheney knew at the time. “Only Cheney and Libby know the import of their conversation, and as is often the case, each could have even come away with a different impression of what was meant” by what the other said, Richman will observe. “If Cheney was merely showing surprise and interest at what Libby [was] indicating to him he was going to tell investigators, then the vice president is innocent in the exchange. But if he had reason to believe, or personal knowledge, that what Libby was planning to say was untrue then there is good reason to view Cheney’s conduct in an entirely different light—an obstruction interpretation.” Libby knew that Plame Wilson was a CIA official a month before his discussion with Russert (see 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003 and 2:00 p.m. June 11, 2003), and Cheney confirmed Plame Wilson’s CIA status to Libby around the same time (see (June 12, 2003)). [National Journal, 2/19/2007] Entity Tags: Bush administration, Dan Richman, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Valerie Plame Wilson, Scott McClellan, Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Department of Justice, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Tim Russert Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
October 14, 2003: Libby Interviewed by FBI concerning Plame Wilson Leak
Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Cheney, is interviewed by the FBI concerning the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). [Office of the Vice President, 10/14/2003 Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Judith Miller, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Valerie Plame Wilson, Matthew Cooper, Tim Russert Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
November 26, 2003: Libby Interviewed a Second Time by FBI Concerning Plame Wilson Leak
Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, is interviewed for a second time (see October 14, 2003) by the FBI concerning the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). [MSNBC, 2/21/2007] During one or both interviews, Libby insists that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from journalists (see July 10 or 11, 2003), a lie that will play a large part in his upcoming indictment (see October 28, 2005). Investigators are compiling evidence that he learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from Cheney and other senior government officials (see (June 12, 2003)). Some investigators will come to believe that Libby is lying, and continues to lie, to protect Cheney’s involvement in attempting to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, war critic Joseph Wilson (see October 1, 2003). [National Journal, 2/2/2006] Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Valerie Plame Wilson, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
August 7, 2004: NBC Reporter Testifies He Did Not Provide Plame Wilson’s Name to Libby
NBC reporter Tim Russert, host of its flagship Sunday morning political talk show Meet the Press, testifies to FBI investigators probing the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see December 30, 2003). He is deposed under oath and is audiotaped, but is not compelled to testify directly to the grand jury investigating the leak. According to an NBC statement, Russert is interviewed under oath, and testifies that he was the recipient of a leak; NBC will later claim that the interview was allowed as part of an agreement to avoid a protracted court fight. Russert is not asked to disclose a confidential source. “The questioning focused on what Russert said when Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, phoned him last summer” (see July 10 or 11, 2003), the statement reads. “Russert told the special prosecutor that at the time of the conversation he didn’t know Plame’s name or that she was a CIA operative and did not provide that information to Libby.” [Office of Special Counsel, 7/27/2004 Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, NBC News, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, John Eckenrode, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Patrick Fitzgerald, Tim Russert Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
July 22, 2005: Press Learns that Libby, Rove Claim to Have Learned Plame Wilson’s CIA Identity from Reporters
Bloomberg News reports that Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, testified that he first learned of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity from NBC bureau chief Tim Russert. Libby will make this claim a staple of his defense in his upcoming perjury trial (see January 16-23, 2007). He is referring to a conversation he had with Russert in July 2003 (see July 10 or 11, 2003). He testified to the claim when he was interviewed by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald as part of the Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003). Russert has told FBI investigators that he did not tell Libby of Plame Wilson’s identity (see November 24, 2003 and August 7, 2004). Similarly, White House political strategist Karl Rove has testified that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from columnist Robert Novak (see September 29, 2003, October 8, 2003, and October 15, 2004). Novak has told investigators that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from Rove, CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see October 7, 2003, February 5, 2004, and September 14, 2004). Fitzgerald has determined that both Libby and Rove may have deliberately lied to the FBI and to his investigations in making their claims (see October and November 2003). According to Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin, Rove told Fitzgerald’s grand jury that “he had not heard her name before he heard it from Bob Novak.” Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) says that the White House should suspend Libby and Rove’s security clearances (see July 13, 2005), and that President Bush should fire anyone involved in the leak, presumably meaning Libby and Rove. [Bloomberg, 7/22/2005; Washington Post, 7/23/2005] Entity Tags: Richard Armitage, Karl Rove, Charles Schumer, Bill Harlow, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Robert Luskin, Robert Novak, Valerie Plame Wilson, Tim Russert, Patrick Fitzgerald Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
October 29, 2005: Wall Street Journal: Fitzgerald Is ‘Criminalizing Politics’
In an op-ed, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial staff accuses special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald of “criminalizing politics” in his investigation of the Plame Wilson leak. Fitzgerald’s investigation, the editorial reads, has taken two years, cost millions of dollars, jailed a reporter (see July 6, 2005), “and preoccupied some of the White House’s senior officials.” The investigation has culminated in the indictment of former White House official Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005), not for leaking Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to the press, but for what the Journal calls “contradictions between his testimony and the testimony of two or three reporters about what he told them, when he told them, and what words he used.” The Journal writes that there is no evidence, at least to the public’s knowledge, that Libby lied to anyone, be it the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003), the grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), or anyone else. Nowhere has anyone alleged a motive for Libby’s alleged perjury, the Journal states (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, October 1, 2003, April 5, 2006, and April 9, 2006). And, the Journal notes, Libby was not a source for the column that actually outed Plame Wilson as a CIA official. The Journal questions the existence of any White House “conspiracy to silence administration critics,” and if there was, it writes, “it was more daft than deft.” Instead, the Journal writes, the Libby indictment “amounts to an allegation that one official lied about what he knew about an underlying ‘crime’ that wasn’t committed.” Fitzgerald is merely involving himself in what the Journal calls “a policy dispute between an elected administration and critics of the president’s approach to the war on terror, who included parts of the permanent bureaucracy of the State Department and CIA.” [Wall Street Journal, 10/29/2005] Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Bush administration, Valerie Plame Wilson, Patrick Fitzgerald, Wall Street Journal Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
October 31, 2005: Former Solicitor General Says Libby Did Not Lie, Did Not Out Plame Wilson
The Wall Street Journal prints an editorial by former Bush Solicitor General Theodore Olson lambasting the Plame Wilson identity leak investigation and the indictment of former White House aide Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005), and criticizing the use of the Independent Counsel Law to investigate the Plame Wilson identity leak. The Journal does not inform its readers of Olson’s participation in using the Independent Counsel Law to bring articles of impeachment against former President Clinton. Olson calls the investigation a “spectacle,” questions special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s impartiality, and says the entire Plame Wilson-Libby investigation is another example of “special prosecutor syndrome,” a politically motivated investigation run amok. Olson writes that he does not believe Libby is guilty of perjury because “I know him to be an honest, conscientious man who has given a large part of his life to public service.” Any misstatements Libby may have made to investigators (see October 14, 2003, November 26, 2003, March 5, 2004, and March 24, 2004) must have been inadvertent failures of memory and not deliberate lies. Moreover, Olson asserts, Libby had nothing to do with exposing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA official (see (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). [Wall Street Journal, 10/31/2005] Entity Tags: Wall Street Journal, Bush administration, Independent Counsel Law, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Patrick Fitzgerald, Theodore (“Ted”) Olson, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
November 7, 2005: Libby Defense Strategy: Attack the Reporters
Defense lawyers for Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005) indicate that they will shift their defense strategy. Not only will they claim that their client did not intentionally lie to either the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) or the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson CIA identity leak (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), they will attempt to impugn the credibility and the accuracy of the journalists who are expected to testify that they learned of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from Libby, instead of the other way around, as Libby will likely claim. Three reporters—Judith Miller of the New York Times, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, and Tim Russert of NBC News—are expected to be the prime focus of the defense’s efforts. It is unclear whether any of the reporters will testify voluntarily, or will resist efforts to have them testify before the jury. [Wall Street Journal, 11/7/2005] Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Judith Miller, Tim Russert, Matthew Cooper, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
November 10, 2005: Former Cheney Aide Praises Libby, Accuses Wilson of Falsifying Information
The National Review publishes an editorial by Cesar Conda, an assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney from January 2001 to September 2003. Conda writes a glowing defense of indicted perjurer Lewis Libby, whom he worked with in Cheney’s office. Conda notes that he was not “personally close” to Libby, and says he has not spoken to him since December 2004. Conda claims no access to the Libby defense team, nor any knowledge of the Libby defense strategy. However, he writes, “I have my own observations of the man, and some commonsense arguments that should to be considered as they relate to the indictment.” Conda calls the portrayal of Libby in special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s indictment of him (see October 28, 2005) a “caricature” that “is utterly at odds with his professional and personal history.” Libby, Conda writes, “is honorable, discreet, selfless—a man of unquestionable integrity. Most of his professional career has been spent in public service, as a behind-the-scenes, yet invaluable staffer at the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the Congress.” Libby served in Cheney’s office “at great personal sacrifice,” according to Conda, choosing to leave “a lucrative private law practice” and “compromis[ing] family time with his two grade-school children—to focus his energies on his all consuming job in the White House.” Conda goes into detail about Libby’s overwhelming workload, a key element of the Libby defense team’s “memory defense” (see January 31, 2006). According to Conda, Libby should be expected to misremember some “fleeting” conversations he may have had with reporters about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and Wilson’s wife, CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, July 10 or 11, 2003, October 14, 2003, November 26, 2003, March 5, 2004, and March 24, 2004). Conda claims that Wilson is at the heart of the Libby indictment, and accuses him of falsifying his report about the Iraq-Niger uranium hoax (see March 4-5, 2002 and July 6, 2003). Conda concludes by praising Libby as a man whose “noble” goal was “to protect the American people from terrorism.” [National Review, 11/10/2005] Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, Bush administration, Cesar Conda, Joseph C. Wilson, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Patrick Fitzgerald, National Review Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
November 17, 2005: Columnist Demands End to Fitzgerald Prosecution of Libby, Says No Damage Done to National Security by Exposure of Plame Wilson
Conservative columnist Tucker Carlson, writing for MSNBC, claims that the exposure of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity did not harm US national security, and offers $100 “to the first person who can prove otherwise” (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, October 29, 2005, and February 13, 2006). Carlson goes on to note that former White House official Lewis Libby was not the first person to leak Plame Wilson’s identity to the press, as recent revelations from the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward show that Woodward knew of Plame Wilson’s CIA status well before Libby leaked it to New York Times reporter Judith Miller (see November 14, 2005). Carlson says in light of these two facts that Libby never should have been charged with anything (see October 14, 2003, November 26, 2003, March 5, 2004, and March 24, 2004), and special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald should apologize to Libby. Moreover, Carlson writes, Fitzgerald is “the enemy” of journalists and the public’s right to know; because of Fitzgerald’s subpoenas to reporters, both reporters and government sources are “spooked.… Thanks to Fitzgerald, there will be fewer leaks from the executive branch in years to come. Fewer leaks mean less information, and therefore a less informed public. We all lose.” [MSNBC, 11/17/2005] Carlson does not inform his readers of his family’s close ties to the Libby defense fund (see February 28, 2006). Entity Tags: MSNBC, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Valerie Plame Wilson, Tucker Carlson, Patrick Fitzgerald Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
November 18, 2005: Neoconservative Demands Dismissal of Charges against Libby
Neoconservative John Podhoretz adds his voice to the recent demands from conservatives for special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to drop his prosecution of former White House official Lewis Libby (see November 10, 2005, November 17, 2005, November 17, 2005, and November 17, 2005). Podhoretz calls Fitzgerald’s investigation an “inquisition,” and, like many of his fellow commentators, points to the recent revelation that reporter Bob Woodward received leaked information about Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status before Libby leaked it to a different reporter (see November 14, 2005). In his indictment of Libby (see October 28, 2005), Fitzgerald said that Libby was “the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter” when he told former New York Times reporter Judith Miller about Plame Wilson (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Fitzgerald did not know then that another, as-yet-unnamed government official (later revealed to be former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage—see June 13, 2003) had “outed” Plame Wilson before Libby. Therefore, Podhoretz concludes, there is no evidence that Libby knowingly lied to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and to Fitzgerald’s grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004) in denying his leaks of Plame Wilson’s identity. “How can it be fair to convict Libby when even the prosecutor himself can’t get the story straight?” Podhoretz asks. [New York Post, 11/18/2005] Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Bob Woodward, John Podhoretz, Judith Miller, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Richard Armitage, Patrick Fitzgerald Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence, Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
January 31, 2006: Libby’s Lawyers Intend to Claim Faulty Memory, National Security as Libby’s Defense Strategy
Lewis Libby’s lawyers reveal a detailed outline of their planned defense strategy to combat government charges that their client committed perjury and obstructed justice (see October 28, 2005). Libby’s lawyers intend to offer what some call a “memory defense,” a claim that Libby did not deliberately lie to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) or to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), but instead was a victim of his own confusion and faulty memory, a condition brought on by his preoccupation with national security matters. Libby’s lawyers have asked for a huge number of highly classified documents (see January 23, 2006 and January 31, 2006) to support his claim of being overworked due to his involvement in the administration’s battle against terrorism and other threats against the nation. The documents, the lawyers claim in a court filing, “are material to establishing that any misstatements he may have made were the result of confusion, mistake, and faulty memory resulting from his immersion in other, more significant matters, rather than deliberate lies.” Libby’s conversations with reporters during the summer of 2003 about CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, July 10 or 11, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003) “occurred in the midst of an unending torrent of meetings, briefings, and discussions of far more urgent and sensitive issues, including for example, the detection and prevention of terrorist attacks against the United States,” bringing stability to Iraq, and the spread of nuclear weapons in North Korea and Iran. Libby was “inundated from early in the morning until late at night with the most sensitive national security issues this country faces,” his lawyers say, and his faulty memory about what he did and did not tell reporters about Plame Wilson is insignificant compared to the other matters that were on his mind. [New York Times, 2/1/2006] Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Valerie Plame Wilson, Patrick Fitzgerald Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
February 27, 2006: Judge May Allow Some, Not All, Classified Materials into Libby Trial
Judge Reggie Walton issues an order significantly curtailing the Lewis Libby defense team’s requests for highly classified White House materials (see After October 28, 2005, January 31, 2006, February 6, 2006, (February 16, 2006), and February 21, 2006). Walton’s orders indicate that he may accept the defense team’s requests for some, but not all, of the highly classified Presidential Daily Briefings (PDBs), requests that have become a source of conflict between the defense and the prosecution. “Upon closer reflection, it is becoming apparent to this court that what is possibly material to the defendant’s ability to develop his defense” is not every detail from the briefings that Libby received as Cheney’s national security adviser, Walton says. The defense says it needs the PDBs to establish how busy Libby was with national security matters and therefore bolster their expected defense of Libby’s failure to remember his conversations about outed CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson when he allegedly lied to the FBI and to the grand jury (Libby’s so-called “memory defense”—see October 14, 2003, November 26, 2003, March 5, 2004, March 24, 2004, and January 31, 2006). General descriptions of the briefings from specific time periods might be sufficient, Walton continues. Walton also asks the CIA to tell him what, if any, documents the Libby team has requested from it might be available. Washington attorney Lawrence Barcella says Walton’s efforts would hamper Libby’s defense strategy. “What makes the defense so viable is for him to show the enormity of what he dealt with on a daily basis,” Barcella says. “If you sanitize it just so you can get past the classified information issue, you significantly lessen the potential impact of it.” [Associated Press, 2/27/2006; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 2/27/2006 Entity Tags: Reggie B. Walton, Bush administration, Jeralyn Merritt, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Valerie Plame Wilson, Lawrence Barcella Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
March 14, 2006: Libby Team Subpoenas Reporters, News Organizations
Several news organizations are subpoenaed by the Lewis Libby defense team (see February 27, 2006). The New York Times, NBC News, and Time magazine all say they have been subpoenaed for documents and records pertaining to Libby’s involvement in the Plame Wilson CIA identity leak. The Washington Post says it expects a subpoena as well. Libby’s lawyers want to use reporters to prove that Libby did not intentionally lie to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and to a grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004) about disclosing Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to the press. Instead, they intend to argue that Libby failed to remember important details about his conversations with reporters regarding Plame Wilson’s identity. The New York Times acknowledges that it has been asked to provide notes, e-mail messages, draft news articles, and all other documents that refer to Plame Wilson before July 14, 2003, when her identity was made public (see July 14, 2003), and information regarding its columnist Nicholas Kristof, who wrote an article featuring Plame Wilson’s husband, Joseph Wilson (see May 6, 2003). Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis says the newspaper has not yet decided whether to comply with the subpoena. She says former Times reporter Judith Miller has received a separate subpoena (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). NBC’s Tim Russert (see July 10 or 11, 2003) and Time’s Matt Cooper (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003) have also been subpoenaed. The Post anticipates receiving a subpoena for its managing editor Bob Woodward (see November 14, 2005 and November 16-17, 2005). [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 3/14/2006 Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Judith Miller, Catherine Mathis, Bob Woodward, Washington Post, Valerie Plame Wilson, Tim Russert, Joseph C. Wilson, New York Times, NBC News, Matthew Cooper, Nicholas Kristof, Robert T. Bennett, Time magazine Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
March 17, 2006: Libby’s Lawyers Claim Client Did Not Intentionally Deceive FBI, Grand Jury in Plame Wilson Statements, Blame CIA/White House ‘Infighting’
Defense lawyers for former White House official Lewis Libby (see October 28, 2005) file papers asserting that Libby had not intentionally deceived FBI agents (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004) because Plame Wilson’s role was was only “peripheral” to potentially more serious questions regarding the Bush administration’s use of intelligence in the prewar debate. The papers reiterate earlier defense requests for classified CIA and White House documents for Libby’s defense. Referring to Plame Wilson’s husband Joseph Wilson’s criticism of the White House’s manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq invasion and the White House’s strategy to counter such criticism (see June 2003 and October 1, 2003), the attorneys tell the court, “The media conflagration ignited by the failure to find [weapons of mass destruction] in Iraq and in part by Mr. Wilson’s criticism of the administration, led officials within the White House, the State Department, and the CIA to blame each other, publicly and in private, for faulty prewar intelligence about Iraq’s WMD capabilities.” Plame Wilson’s identity was disclosed during “a period of increasing bureaucratic infighting, when certain officials at the CIA, the White House, and the State Department each sought to avoid or assign blame for intelligence failures relating to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capability,” the attorneys write. “The White House and the CIA were widely regarded to be at war.” The defense lawyers also assert that Libby “believed his actions were authorized” and that he had “testified before the grand jury that this disclosure was authorized,” a reference to the classified intelligence he leaked to New York Times reporter Judith Miller (see February 2, 2006). [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 3/17/2006 Entity Tags: US Department of State, Central Intelligence Agency, Bush administration, Jeralyn Merritt, Joseph C. Wilson, Judith Miller, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
May 19, 2006: Libby Continues to Argue for Provision of Classified Documents, Contends that Op-Ed Should Not Be Presented
The Libby defense team files a brief with the court arguing that the special counsel’s recent filing about presentation of news articles into evidence is unsatisfactory (see May 12, 2006), and says that the prosecution must not be allowed to present a copy of former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s New York Times op-ed (see July 6, 2003), annotated with notes written by Vice President Dick Cheney (see May 14, 2006), into evidence. The defense says that Lewis Libby had never seen the op-ed before the FBI showed it to him in November 2003 (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003). “These arguments are tantamount to an acknowledgment that the state of mind of witnesses other than Mr. Libby will be important at trial,” Libby’s lawyers write. The defense also reiterates arguments that the government must provide classified documents for Libby to mount an adequate defense (see May 12, 2006), and reassures Judge Reggie Walton that they do not intend “to use this case to reargue the reasons why the United States invaded Iraq.” They acknowledge that given the fact that a jury will made up of Washington, DC, residents, “such an approach would be a foolish and self-destructive trial strategy.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 5/19/2006 Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Joseph C. Wilson, Reggie B. Walton, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
May 24, 2006: Fitzgerald May Call Cheney to Testify
Vice President Dick Cheney may be called to testify for the prosecution in the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction trial, says special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in a brief filed with the court. Libby once served as Cheney’s chief of staff and Cheney could authenticate handwritten notes he wrote on a copy of an op-ed written by war critic Joseph Wilson (see May 14, 2006). Furthermore, Fitzgerald says, Cheney’s “state of mind” is directly relevant to the question of Libby’s alleged lying to FBI agents (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and a grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004) about leaking the identity of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson. Libby “shared the interests of his superior and was subject to his direction,” Fitzgerald writes in court documents. “Therefore, the state of mind of the vice president as communicated to [the] defendant is directly relevant to the issue of whether [the] defendant knowingly made false statements to federal agents and the grand jury regarding when and how he learned about [Plame Wilson’s] employment and what he said to reporters regarding this issue.” Libby’s lawyers have asserted that Fitzgerald would not subpoena Cheney’s testimony, an assertion that Fitzgerald says is premature. “To the best of government’s counsel’s recollection, the government has not commented on whether it intends to call the vice president as a witness.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 5/24/2006 Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Tim Grieve, Jeralyn Merritt, Valerie Plame Wilson, Patrick Fitzgerald, Tim Russert Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
July 31, 2006: Libby Legal Team Will Call UCLA Memory Expert to Testify
Lewis Libby’s legal team announces that it intends to call a psychology professor to testify that Libby did not deliberately lie to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and to the grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), but merely made misstatements due to memory failure. In a court filing, the lawyers write, “Mr. Libby will show that the snippets of conversation at issue in this case took place amid a rush of pressing national security matters that commanded his attention throughout his long and stressful work day” (see January 31, 2006). The witness is Robert Bjork, a memory expert from UCLA. The lawyers say Bjork will explain that, contrary to what jurors may think, “memory does not function like a tape recorder, with memories recorded, stored, and played back verbatim.” Cornell University professor Ulric Neisser says the so-called “memory defense” that Libby’s team intends to mount may be effective. Referring to Libby’s claim that he learned of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson from a reporter (see 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003, 2:00 p.m. June 11, 2003, 5:27 p.m. June 11, 2003, (June 12, 2003), and July 10 or 11, 2003), Neisser says, “If everything hinges on who he learned it from first, people do forget that stuff all the time.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 7/31/2006 Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Jeralyn Merritt, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Robert Bjork, Ulric Neisser Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
August 11, 2006: CIA Provides Summaries of Cheney Briefings to Libby Defense Team
The CIA provides short summaries of Vice President Dick Cheney’s daily security briefings to defense attorneys for Cheney’s indicted former chief of staff, Lewis Libby. The documents are provided as per a March court order (see March 10, 2006). They have been turned over in batches since May 2006; the final documents have just been turned over. The briefing summaries cover the period in the summer of 2003 when Libby was allegedly discussing Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity with journalists. They also cover several weeks in the fall of 2003 when Libby was questioned by the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003), and March 2004 when Libby testified before a federal grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). [Associated Press, 8/11/2006] Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
September 7, 2006: Fitzgerald Opposes Testimony of ‘Memory Expert’
Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald files a motion opposing the Libby defense team’s intention to call a “memory expert” to testify on Libby’s behalf (see July 31, 2006). Libby’s lawyers intend to argue that their client, indicted felon and former White House aide Lewis Libby, has a faulty memory (see January 31, 2006), and it was a series of memory lapses that caused him to make false statements to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and the grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004) about his outing of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson to reporters (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Fitzgerald opposes the testimony of UCLA professor Robert Bjork, not because of problems with Bjork’s expertise in the field of human memory, but because “the defendant cannot meet his burden as the proponent of the evidence of establishing that the testimony will assist the jury in understanding or determining any of the facts at issue in this case.… To the contrary, there are strong reasons to believe that the proffered testimony may confuse, mislead, and unduly influence the jury.” Juries are often asked to evaluate a defendant’s memory in the course of a criminal trial, and it is “unusual” to present such testimony in the furtherance of a criminal defense, Fitzgerald asserts. [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 9/7/2006 Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Patrick Fitzgerald, Robert Bjork Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
September 15, 2006: Libby Defense Argues for Admission of Memory Expert Testimony
Lewis Libby’s defense team files a brief contesting the prosecution’s attempt to bar proposed testimony by memory expert Dr. Robert Bjork (see July 31, 2006 and September 7, 2006). The defense lawyers accuse the prosecution of “trivializing” Bjork’s expertise in memory issues, and assert that the jury will need testimony from Bjork to adequately understand how Libby could have forgotten the information that led to his “inadvertent” lying to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and the Fitzgerald grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). Bjork’s testimony is envisioned as an integral part of the Libby “memory defense” (see January 31, 2006). [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 9/15/2006] In November, the judge will disallow Bjork’s testimony (see November 2, 2006). Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Robert Bjork Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
September 27, 2006: Libby Trial Judge Holds Hearing on ‘Graymail’ Issue
Judge Reggie Walton holds a hearing with prosecutors for special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and representatives from Lewis Libby’s defense team on the issue of “graymail,” which Fitzgerald has alleged is a tactic being employed by Libby’s team (see After October 28, 2005, January 31, 2006, February 6, 2006, and (February 16, 2006)). “Graymail” is the attempt by one side in a court proceeding to derail the proceeding by insisting on the use of classified materials as evidence, and demanding mistrials or dropped charges if and when those classified materials are disallowed. Libby’s lawyers have privately and publicly implied that they will reveal national security secrets if the case actually goes to trial. The hearing, which is delayed because of a bomb threat, is the first of several hearings to be held on the subject. Fitzgerald wants to curtail the introduction of classified documents during the trial, while Libby’s lawyers want to introduce reams of classified documents into evidence (see May 10, 2006). Fitzgerald has argued repeatedly that many of the classified documents requested by Libby are irrelevant to the case at hand. Libby wants to introduce a number of highly classified presidential briefings to show his heavy and varied workload, as support for his defense that he was too overworked to testify accurately before the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and Fitzgerald’s grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). Walton has already reminded Fitzgerald that he can dismiss the charges against Libby if he feels the upcoming trial will expose national security secrets. [MSNBC, 9/26/2006; Christy Hardin Smith, 9/27/2006] Entity Tags: Patrick Fitzgerald, Reggie B. Walton, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
November 14, 2006: Libby Lawyers: No White House Plot to Expose Plame Wilson
The Lewis Libby defense team argues in a court filing that there was no such thing as an orchestrated plot to expose Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA official, and writes that Libby, a former White House official who told at least two reporters that Plame Wilson was a CIA official (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003), had no reason to lie during the investigation of the leak (see October 14, 2003, November 26, 2003, March 5, 2004, and March 24, 2004). Libby’s lawyers want to present a wide-ranging defense concerning Libby’s duties and actions at the White House, while special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, the US Attorney prosecuting the case, wants to stay narrowly focused on evidence that Libby lied under oath to the FBI and to a grand jury. “It is doubtful that anyone committed an ‘underlying crime’ here,” Libby’s lawyers write. “The government’s investigation began as an effort to discover which government officials had ‘leaked’ Ms. Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA to Mr. Novak” (see July 14, 2003). The Libby lawyers base their argument on the fact that former State Department official Richard Armitage leaked Plame Wilson’s identity to a reporter before Libby did (see June 13, 2003). “Members of the jury will have heard for years that Mr. Libby leaked classified information about Valerie Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA, due to inaccurate reports in the press,” the defense attorneys write. “Indeed, the government has contributed to the likely misimpressions that potential jurors will have about this case.” In previous filings, Fitzgerald has argued that the upcoming trial should not be a forum to debate the leak itself or question why Libby was charged and others were not. [Associated Press, 11/14/2006] Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Bush administration, Patrick Fitzgerald, Richard Armitage, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
December 11, 2006: Judge Limits Libby’s Introduction of Classified Material into Evidence
Judge Reggie Walton rules that former White House aide Lewis Libby’s lawyers will be restricted in how they present classified information during Libby’s perjury and obstruction trial. Prosecutors, led by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, have complained that Libby’s lawyers have made unreasonable demands for huge amounts of classified White House and other government documents, many of which are irrelevant, and have attempted to “graymail” the prosecution into dropping the charges against Libby for fear that the trial will reveal national security secrets (see After October 28, 2005, January 31, 2006, February 6, 2006, (February 16, 2006), and September 27, 2006). Libby says that his work with security issues such as terrorist threats and foreign nuclear programs caused him to inadvertently lie to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and to Fitzgerald’s grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), and he wants to present classified information during his trial to prove the extent of his workload. Walton rules that the substitutions and summaries Fitzgerald has provided to the Libby lawyers will allow Libby “substantially the same ability to make his defense as would disclosure of the specific classified information.” NBC News producer Joel Seidman, writing for MSNBC, reports that Walton’s ruling may spell the end of Libby’s attempts to derail the trial by the use of “graymail” (see After October 28, 2005, January 31, 2006, February 6, 2006, (February 16, 2006), and September 27, 2006). [Associated Press, 12/11/2006; MSNBC, 12/11/2006] Entity Tags: Patrick Fitzgerald, Joel Seidman, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Reggie B. Walton Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
December 19, 2006: Libby Defense Team Informs Court that Cheney Will Testify
Lewis Libby’s defense lawyers inform the court that they intend to call Vice President Dick Cheney as a witness in Libby’s trial. “We’re calling the vice president,” says lead defense lawyer Theodore Wells. For his part, Cheney says he is willing to testify on behalf of his former chief of staff. “We don’t expect him to resist,” says another of Libby’s lawyers, William Jeffress. Apparently, the defense intends to have Cheney establish its contention that Libby was overworked and under strain dealing with critical national security issues, a condition it says led to Libby’s “inadvertent” lies and misstatements to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). Law professor Peter Shane says Cheney’s willingness to testify is unuusal because of his aggressive efforts to keep the executive branch from being forced to disclose information about its workings. Cheney’s spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride says that “historians are entitled to their opinions, but the vice president has said from the very beginning that we’re cooperating in this matter and we will continue to do so.” [Associated Press, 12/19/2006; New York Times, 12/19/2006; Washington Post, 12/20/2006] Cheney told reporters in June that he “may be called as a witness” in Libby’s trial (see June 22, 2006). However, he will not testify in the trial. Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Lea Anne McBride, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Peter Shane, Theodore Wells, William Jeffress, Patrick Fitzgerald Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
January 2, 2007: Up to 10 Journalists to Testify in Libby Trial
As many as 10 journalists are expected to testify during the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction trial. Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, calls the prospect “unprecedented and, as far as I’m concerned, horrifying.” Libby’s lawyers may subpoena as many as seven journalists, whom they have not yet identified, to testify, in order to bolster their contention that Libby’s poor memory caused him to inadvertently lie to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and to a grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004) about his involvement in exposing the CIA identity of Valerie Plame Wilson (see January 31, 2006). Roy Peter Clark, a scholar at the Poynter Institute, says he worries about the fallout from the trial, particularly in the future ability of journalists to protect their sources. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty recently told Congress that the Justice Department routinely observes restraint in issuing subpoenas to reporters, and has only issued 13 media subpoenas involving confidential sources in the last 15 years. “This record reflects restraint,” McNulty told Congress. “We have recognized the media’s right and obligation to report broadly on issues of public controversy and, absent extraordinary circumstances, have committed to shielding the media from all forms of compulsory process.” [Associated Press, 1/2/2007] Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Paul McNulty, Roy Peter Clark, Lucy Dalglish Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
January 23, 2007: Libby’s Lawyer Makes Opening Statement to Jury: Libby Being Sacrificed to Protect Rove
Theodore Wells, the lead lawyer for the Lewis Libby defense team, makes his opening statement to the jury in the Libby perjury and obstruction trial (see January 16-23, 2007), and proclaims Libby’s innocence of all charges. While Libby may have misspoken to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and the Plame Wilson grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004) about his involvement in leaking Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status to reporters, he never lied to either one, Wells says, because there was never any intent to lie. He was not trying to cover anything up, Wells asserts, because he did nothing illegal or questionable. “This is a case about memory, about recollection, and about words,” Wells says. Wells surprises observers by claiming Libby was made a scapegoat by the White House in order to protect President Bush’s chief political strategist Karl Rove. Rove has admitted to being a source of the original leak (see October 15, 2004, February 2004, and October 14, 2005). Wells tells the jury that Libby believes his former colleagues in the Bush administration tried to “set him up” to “take a fall” in the investigation of the Plame Wilson identity leak. According to Wells, Libby said to his then-boss, Vice President Dick Cheney: “They’re trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb.” Libby, according to Wells, believed he was being sacrificed to protect Rove. Wells says that Libby told Cheney, “I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected.” Wells tells the jury: “Mr. Libby was not concerned about losing his job in the Bush administration. He was concerned about being set up, he was concerned about being made the scapegoat.… People in the White House are trying to protect Karl Rove.” Libby was considered “just a staffer,” while Rove “was viewed as a political genius… the lifeblood of the Republican Party.” [Pensito Review, 1/23/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/23/2007; CBS News, 1/25/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007] Plame Wilson will observe, “The tactic went against the conventional wisdom that Libby would play the good soldier, say nothing of value, and receive a presidential pardon if convicted.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 282-284] In a PowerPoint presentation, Wells presents the jury with the following bullet points about Libby: Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Patrick Fitzgerald, Theodore Wells, Karl Rove, Bush administration Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
January 25, 2007: Prosecution: Libby Lied for Fear of Losing Job
Patrick Fitzgerald, prosecuting Lewis Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice, files a motion with the court alleging a new motive for Libby to have lied to investigators (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and the grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). Fitzgerald argues that since Libby signed non-disclosure agreements in connection with his White House employment, by testifying truthfully about his leaking of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status to reporters, he risked losing his job. “The government intends to prove that, at the time he made the charged false statements, defendant was aware that, if Ms. Wilson’s employment status was in fact classified, or that Ms. Wilson was in fact a covert CIA officer, in addition to potential criminal prosecution under a number of statutes, defendant faced the possible loss of his security clearances, removal from office, and termination from employment as a result of his disclosures to New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper” (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Fitzgerald intends to introduce into evidence five non-disclosure agreements signed by Libby. According to lawyer Jeralyn Merritt, writing for the progressive blog TalkLeft, Fitzgerald’s motion is designed to counter defense arguments that Libby had no motive to lie under oath. Merritt is not convinced of Fitzgerald’s argument, writing: “I’m not sold on this motion. There’s no linkage to Libby’s focus on the agreements at the time he was interviewed by the FBI or testified to the grand jury. I could see it if Fitz had evidence of a conversation Libby had with someone about his fear that his comments to reporters violated the non-disclosure agreements. But, those agreements are standard for people in sensitive government positions. Had he re-read them or been reminded of them before his interviews with FBI agents or grand jury testimony? Without evidence that Libby was concerned about the non-disclosure agreements at the time of his statements, I don’t think the mere existence of them establishes motive.” [Jeralyn Merritt, 1/26/2007] Entity Tags: Patrick Fitzgerald, Jeralyn Merritt, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Judith Miller, Valerie Plame Wilson, Matthew Cooper Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
February 1-5, 2007: FBI Agent Testifies that Libby Said He and Cheney May Have Discussed Outing Plame Wilson to Press
FBI agent Deborah Bond testifies for the prosecution in the trial of former White House official Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see January 16-23, 2007). Bond took over the Libby investigation when the previous head, John Eckenrode (see November 24, 2003), retired. She discusses two interviews she held with Libby, in October and November 2003 respectively (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003). She says that in one interview Libby acknowledged that his former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, “may have talked” on July 12, 2003, about telling the press that former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, worked at the CIA, though Libby told her that he was “not sure” the conversation actually took place. According to Bond, Libby acknowledged that he and Cheney “may have” discussed the Plame Wilson matter the same day, while the two flew back to Washington from Norfolk aboard Air Force Two (see July 12, 2003); Libby said that Cheney might have learned about Plame Wilson’s CIA status from CIA Director George Tenet or another CIA official, though he was not sure. Cheney was wondering how to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, war critic Joseph Wilson. Days before, Cheney had written in the margin of an op-ed by Wilson a question about the possibility of Plame Wilson sending her husband on a fact-finding “junket” to Niger (see July 7, 2003 or Shortly After). Libby told the FBI during a November 2003 interview that, in the agent’s words, “there was a discussion whether to report to the press that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA” during that July 12 flight. “Mr. Libby told us he believed they may have talked about it but he wasn’t sure.” In the hours after the discussion, Libby called reporter Judith Miller; in their conversation, he outed Plame Wilson as a CIA official and accused her of sending her husband to Niger (see Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003), though Bond testifies that Libby denied ever mentioning Plame Wilson to Miller. Libby also called Time reporter Matthew Cooper and confirmed that Plame Wilson was a CIA officer, and had been involved in her husband’s trip (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003). Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff says of Bond’s testimony, “This is significant, because it bring [sic] Cheney himself far more directly into the case, and for the first time suggests that it was the vice president who wanted the news about Wilson’s wife to be circulated to the news media.” Bond’s testimony also establishes the first time Libby claimed he “forgot” about learning Plame Wilson’s CIA status until “remembering” in October 2003. [Marcy Wheeler, 2/1/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/1/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/1/2007; Washington Post, 2/2/2007; Associated Press, 2/2/2007; National Journal, 2/15/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007] The defense presses Bond to acknowledge that Libby told her he was unsure of his memory and needed to consult his notes to be sure of his facts. Defense lawyer Theodore Wells also notes that Bond’s notes from the Libby interview are incomplete, and fail to mention Libby’s denials of disclosing Plame Wilson’s identity to Miller. Bond says that while she is sure Libby denied discussing Plame Wilson’s CIA identity with then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (see January 29, 2007), FBI notes of Libby’s testimony contain no record of such a denial. The notes say that he may have discussed it, but he couldn’t recall. “Adamantly might not be the perfect word,” Bond testifies. [Marcy Wheeler, 2/1/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/1/2007; Associated Press, 2/5/2007; FireDogLake, 2/5/2007; FireDogLake, 2/5/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007] Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Deborah Bond, George J. Tenet, Judith Miller, John Eckenrode, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Ari Fleischer, Michael Isikoff, Joseph C. Wilson, Matthew Cooper, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Valerie Plame Wilson, Theodore Wells Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
February 5, 2007: Lawyers Say Evidence of Libby’s State of Mind Should Be Admissible Even if Libby Does Not Testify
Lewis Libby’s defense lawyers file a brief with the court arguing that they should be able to present evidence as to Libby’s state of mind during his tenure at the White House even if Libby does not testify on his own behalf. The legal team wants to use what some call a “memory defense”—an assertion that Libby’s workload at the White House was so stressful that he did not deliberately lie to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and to a grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), but merely “misremembered” pertinent facts regarding his involvement in the exposure of Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert CIA official (see January 31, 2006). The lawyers argue that to exclude such evidence, regardless of Libby’s choice to testify or not, would violate his constitutional rights to a fair trial. The brief notes that no decision as to Libby’s testimony has yet been made. [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 2/5/2007 Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Bush administration, Jeralyn Merritt, Valerie Plame Wilson, Christy Hardin Smith, Reggie B. Walton Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
February 16, 2007: Neoconservative Blasts NBC Reporter for Cooperating with FBI, Says Contradictions in Testimony Should Free Libby
Neoconservative John Podhoretz, writing for the New York Post’s editorial page, provides much of the information the defense had attempted unsuccessfully to raise during the Libby perjury trial about NBC reporter Tim Russert (see February 14, 2007). Podhoretz is referring to a stipulation the jury heard in final testimony, written by former FBI agent John Eckenrode, who interviewed Russert about his knowledge and potential involvement in the press exposure of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson (see November 24, 2003). In the interview, Russert said he did not speak to then-White House official Lewis Libby about Plame Wilson, and did not inform him of Plame Wilson’s CIA status, though he could not rule it out completely. Libby has told both the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and a grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004) that he learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from Russert (see July 10 or 11, 2003). Russert gave a deposition for that same grand jury (see August 7, 2004) and testified in Libby’s trial (see February 7-8, 2007) that he was sure he never spoke to Libby about Plame Wilson. Podhoretz writes: “The question is: How could Russert’s memory of his July 2003 conversation with Libby improve over time? If he wasn’t sure about the details in November 2003, how could he be so certain about them when testifying before a grand jury in 2005? And be even more certain testifying in court in 2007? Should the jury believe Russert’s words now—or take more account of his words in November 2003?” (Podhoretz errs in stating Russert gave the deposition in 2005; he gave that deposition in August 2004.) Podhoretz then advises the Libby defense lawyers to use the apparent contradiction in their closing arguments, which are coming up in a matter of days: “The stipulation will allow the defense to make a strong case in closing arguments next week that Russert’s initial description of the phone call needs to be taken very seriously. The prosecution must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The stipulation casts doubt on Russert’s firm testimony.” Podhoretz believes that the issue can likely lead the jury to find that it cannot conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Libby perjured himself. Podhoretz concludes by misrepresenting Russert’s statement to Eckenrode: according to Podhoretz, all it took was a single phone call from the FBI for Russert to breach his professional ethics by revealing information about sources to Eckenrode, when in reality Russert told Eckenrode he did not learn of Plame Wilson’s identity from Libby, and battled the subpoena that compelled his testimony for the grand jury (see May 13-20, 2004, May 21, 2004, May 21, 2004, June 2004, June 2, 2004, and June 4, 2004). Podhoretz concludes, “[M]aybe, just maybe, Russert’s original words from November 2003—words he should never have spoken in the first place—will help get my friend Scooter out of his disgraceful mess.” [New York Post, 2/16/2007] Entity Tags: John Podhoretz, John Eckenrode, Tim Russert, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Valerie Plame Wilson Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
9:00 a.m. February 20, 2007: Prosecution Closes; Says Case Proved Libby Lied to Grand Jury, FBI
Entity Tags: Matthew Cooper, Peter Zeidenberg, Theodore Wells, Robert Novak, Valerie Plame Wilson, Tim Russert, Marc Grossman, Robert Grenier, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Frederick Fleitz, Judith Miller, Bush administration, Bill Harlow, Ari Fleischer, Cathie Martin, Craig Schmall, David S. Addington, Joseph C. Wilson, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Deborah Bond, Karl Rove, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
February 21, 2007: Jurors Begin Deliberations in Libby Trial
Jurors begin deliberating in the trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see January 16-23, 2007). In an hour of jury instructions, Judge Reggie Walton tells the jury to focus on the specific charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, and “not to let the nature of the case” affect its deliberations. The jury will deliberate every weekday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with an hour for lunch, until it has reached a verdict. [MSNBC, 2/21/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/21/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007] The proceedings begin with a query about a juror’s impartiality towards a lawyer from the firm of Baker Botts, who appeared yesterday with the defense team for closing arguments. Walton determines that no issue exists and turns to jury instructions. [Marcy Wheeler, 2/21/2007] Warning the jury to “follow the law” and not “question the law,” Walton explains that Libby is presumed innocent unless the jury finds him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, “then you must find guilty.” He walks the jury through each of the charges, and explains how the jury can find verdicts: Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Matthew Cooper, Baker Botts, Tim Russert, Reggie B. Walton, Valerie Plame Wilson, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
February 27-28, 2007: Jury Requests Clarification during Libby Trial Deliberations
The jury in the Lewis Libby perjury trial submits a request for clarification to Judge Reggie Walton. The jury wishes more information pertaining to Charge 3 of the indictment (see October 28, 2005), a perjury charge regarding Libby’s alleged lies about his conversation with Time reporter Matthew Cooper (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003). The jurors are not sure whether Libby’s claim of learning about Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from reporters was made in the context of the conversation. Walton is unclear what the jury is asking, and requests more information about its question. The note reads, “Page 74 of the jury instructions, ‘Count 3 of the indictment alleges that Mr. Libby falsely told the FBI on October 14 or November 26, 2003 (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003), that during a conversation with M. Cooper of Time magazine on July 12, 2003 (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003), Mr. Libby told Mr. Cooper that reporters were telling the administration that Mr. Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA but that Mr. Libby did not know if this was true.” Apparently the jury is confused over whether Libby is charged with lying to Cooper, the FBI, or both. Walton sends the note back with a comment: “I am not exactly certain what you are asking me. Can you please clarify your question?” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 2/27/2007 Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Matthew Cooper, Reggie B. Walton, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
March 6, 2007: Former Justice Department Official Lays Out Legal Arguments for Appeal of Libby Verdicts
Within hours of the four guilty verdicts against Lewis Libby being handed down (see March 6, 2007), former Justice Department official Victoria Toensing publishes a brief article on the Web site of the National Review, a conservative news and opinion publication, delineating the arguments behind a possible appeal of the verdicts. Toensing was a signatory of a “friend of the court” brief on behalf of Libby (see March 23, 2005), and has written numerous articles attacking the prosecution and disparaging the trial (see November 2-9, 2005, November 3, 2005, November 7, 2005, September 15, 2006, and February 18, 2007). She writes that the trial verdicts “make… no logical sense, but that won’t bother the legal notions of an appellate court.” Toensing represents the verdicts as the jury finding that Libby lied to a grand jury about his conversation with Time reporter Matthew Cooper (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), but did not lie about the same conversation to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003). Toensing opines that “[t]he court punished Libby for not taking the stand,” which she says made Judge Reggie Walton “furious” and led him to limit Libby’s use of his “memory defense” (see February 12, 2007). She also objects to Walton’s refusal to allow the defense to attack NBC reporter Tim Russert for apparent contradictions in his testimony (see February 14, 2007). And she falsely states that Walton repeatedly allowed special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to characterize CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson as “classified” or “covert” during the trial, saying such characterizations were “highly prejudicial”; in reality, Walton prohibited the jury from hearing testimony that would confirm or deny Plame Wilson’s classified status, and supported a defense objection to Fitzgerald’s implication to such a status during his closing argument (see 9:00 a.m. February 20, 2007). Toensing notes that Fitzgerald did call Plame Wilson “classified” in a press conference held after Libby’s conviction was declared in the court, and reiterates her argument that exposing Plame Wilson’s CIA status does not constitute a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. [National Review, 3/6/2007] Ten days after Toensing’s article, Plame Wilson will confirm to Congress that she was a covert CIA official (see Fall 1992 - 1996, Late 1990s-2001 and Possibly After, April 22, 1999, (July 11, 2003), Before July 14, 2003, July 22, 2003, July 30, 2003, September 30, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, January 9, 2006, February 13, 2006, and September 6, 2006) up to the moment she was exposed by columnist Robert Novak (see March 16, 2007). Entity Tags: Reggie B. Walton, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Patrick Fitzgerald, Valerie Plame Wilson, Tim Russert, Victoria Toensing Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
March 7, 2007: New York Post: ‘Free Scooter Libby’
The New York Post joins the National Review (see March 6, 2007 and March 6, 2007) in demanding an immediate presidential pardon for convicted felon Lewis Libby (see March 6, 2007). The Post accuses “Democrats and Bush-bashers in the media” of “chortling with glee” over the guilty verdicts, and says special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald now “has a high-level scalp on his belt,” Libby’s. The Post joins many other conservative media pundits and publications in asking why Libby was prosecuted for leaking Valerie Plame Wilson’s name to the press (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003) when the first admitted leaker was another government official, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see June 13, 2003). (The Post fails to note that Armitage admitted to his leak—see October 2, 2003—while Libby committed perjury and obstruction of justice in his untruthful denials of leaking Plame Wilson’s identity—see October 14, 2003, November 26, 2003, March 5, 2004, and March 24, 2004.) Instead, the Post writes, the entire investigation and trial was about “[s]coring points against [President] Bush. That much is obvious, given prosecutor Fitzgerald’s conduct during Libby’s trial.” The Post charges Fitzgerald with being “blatantly political” in charging Vice President Dick Cheney with orchestrating the leak and violating the court’s orders not to discuss Plame Wilson’s covert status (see 9:00 a.m. February 20, 2007). It paints the jury as “wholly confused,” and writes that perhaps the jury was less interested in issuing a fair verdict for Libby and more interested “in just going home.” The Post exhorts President Bush to pardon Libby, and writes: “Sure, he’d take a lot of political heat for it. But Libby was in the dock because of politics—and turnabout is fair play. Free Scooter Libby.” [New York Post, 3/7/2007] Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, George W. Bush, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, New York Post, Patrick Fitzgerald, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Richard Armitage Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing Date ascending Date descending weekly email updates summarizing what contributors have added to the History Commons database
| 1 Army Sgt. Nick Wysong keeps watch as the Army's 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, the last formal U.S. military combat detachment to leave Iraq, stops for fuel south of Baghdad, Iraq, on August 17, 2010. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT)
2 At sunrise, members of the Army's 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, the last formal U.S. military combat detachment to leave Iraq, crossed the Iraq desert a few miles from the Kuwait border in a tactical road march on August 17, 2010. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT)
3 Young Iraqi shepherds wave to members of the Army?s 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry, the last formal U.S. military combat detachment to leave Iraq. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT)
4 Lt. Col. Richard D. Heyward, left, and Sgt. Nick Wysong, right, keep watch as the Army's 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, the last formal U.S. military combat detachment to leave Iraq, crosses the southern desert lands of Iraq on August 17, 2010. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT)
5 After two twelve-hour troop movements, Army Specialist John Ray rests inside a Stryker vehicle as the Army's 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry, the last formal U.S. military combat detachment to leave Iraq, make their way towards the Kuwait border. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT)
6 Army Specialist Tyson Kuwaye lifts Specialist Matt Cullum after they completed a two-day road march with their division, 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry, the last formal U.S. military combat detachment to leave Iraq, to the Iraq-Kuwait border on August 18, 2010. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT)
7 In this Aug. 16, 2010 photo, U.S. Army soldiers from 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment pose with an American flag for a photograph after crossing the border from Iraq into Kuwait. The soldiers from 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, are the last combat brigade to leave Iraq as part of the drawdown of U.S. forces. (AP Photo/ Maya Alleruzzo)
9 A soldier with the Army's 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, the last formal U.S. military combat detachment to leave Iraq, puts down his weapon at Camp Taji, Iraq, on August 15, 2010. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT)
10 A U.S. Army soldier from 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division waves from his Stryker armored vehicle after crossing the border from Iraq into Kuwait Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2010. The soldiers are part of the last combat brigade to leave Iraq as part of the drawdown of U.S. forces. (AP Photo/ Maya Alleruzzo)
11 Marine Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller, 20, of Kentucky, a member of Charlie Company of the U.S. Marines First Division, Eighth regiment, smokes a cigarette. Miller came to be known as the "Marlboro Man" for this iconic photograph from the Iraq War. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
13 Tens of thousands of antiwar protesters gather on the National Mall in Washington to protest the war on Iraq Saturday, Jan. 18, 2003. (AP {Photo/Rick Bowmer)
14 Haylee Schimmelpfenneg embraces her father, Sergeant First Class Robert Schimmelpfenneg, after a deployment ceremony for the 3rd Brigade Combat Team in Fort Carson. The soldier deployment from Fort Carson for impending war in Iraq is the greatest since the Vietnam War. (Glenn Asakawa/The Denver Post)
15 Soldiers salute during the National Anthem at the beginning of a deployment ceremony for the 3rd Brigade Combat Team in Fort Carson. The soldier deployment from Fort Carson for impending war in Iraq is the greatest since the Vietnam War. (Glenn Asakawa/The Denver Post)
16 Smoke covers the presidential palace compound in Baghdad 21 March 2003 during a massive US-led air raid on the Iraqi capital. Smoke billowed from a number of targeted sites, including one of President Saddam Hussein's palaces, an AFP correspondent said. AFP PHOTO/Ramzi HAIDAR
17 A young Iraqi girl cries as a British Challenger tank moves in on the Baath party office. (Odd Anderson/AFP/Getty Images)
18 IRAQ--EPW's, Enemy prisoners of war, surrender to Marines just inside the Kuwait Iraq border, Friday morning Iraq time. THE DENVER POST/ ANDY CROSS
19 U.S. Marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit help an Iraqi soldier with water from a canteen in southern Iraq, on Friday, March 21, 2003. Some 200 Iraqi soldiers surrendered to the U.S. 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit just after an hour after it crossed the border into Iraq from northern Kuwait. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)
20 This photo released 23 March 2003 shows a British Royal Marine from 42 Commando squadron firing a Milan wire-guided missile at an Iraqi position on the Fao peninsula 21 March 2003. Iraqi troops were searching the Tigris river for US or British aircrew who allegedly were shot down over Baghdad. AFP PHOTO/JOHN MILLS
21 An anti-war protester, hand covered with a red substance, flashes a peace sign while being arrested during a demonstration outside the White House Friday, March 21, 2003. Anti-war activists rolled out another wave of demonstrations Friday in their campaign against the war on Iraq that includes sit-ins in the streets and at federal buildings, mass rallies and quiet vigils. Hundreds have been arrested. (AP Photo/Teru Iwasaki)
22 U.S. Marine Lt. Ben Reid from Charlie Company of Task Force Tarawa waits to be medivaced after being hit with shrapnel and a machine gun round. The Marines suffered a number of deaths and casualties during gun battles throughout the city. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
23 A U.S. Marine amored assault vehicle from Task Force Tarawa flies the American flag during a gun battle. The Marines suffered a number of deaths and casualties during gun battles throughout the city. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
24 A U.S. Marine from Task Force Tarawa walks with his ammunition and weapon. The Marines have had running gun battles over the past two days with a stubborn resistance within and around the city. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
25 Infantry with Task Force 2-69 Armor of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division from Fort Benning, Ga., disembark from a Bradley Fighting Vehicle to surround a man who was stopped for suspicious activity somewhere in Iraq, Monday, March 24, 2003. An AK-47 automatic rifle and ammunition were found in the man's vehicle. (AP Photo/The Dallas Morning News, David Leeson)
26 A soldier with Task Force 2-69 Armor of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division from Fort Benning, Ga., walks past the bodies of dead Iraqi soldiers in a desert somewhere in Iraq Monday, March 24, 2003. (AP Photo/David Leeson, The Dallas Morning News)
27 IRAQ-PRISONERS -- In the first six days of war with Iraq, the American and British armies have taken more than 3,500 prisoners of war, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday, March 25, 2003. It is not clear exactly where the prisoners are being held -- in temporary pens created by the advancing allied units, or in more centralized locations, according to military officials contacted late Tuesday night. Iraqi POW's sit bound inside a circle of barbed wire waiting to be questioned following a battle with 3rd Infantry Division Task Force 1-64, Sunday March 23, 2003. (Brant Sanderlin/Cox News Service)
28 Joseph Dwyer, 26, from Mt. Sinai, NY, carries a young Iraqi boy who was injured during a heavy battle between the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry Regiment and Iraqi forces Tuesday, March 25, 2003 near the village of Al Faysaliyah, Iraq. (AP Photo/Warren Zinn, Army Times)
29 Marine Corp. Eric Silva, of New Jersey, fights the wind for his tent during a severe sandstorm at Camp Viper in the Iraqi desert, Tuesday, March 25, 2003. Iraq often sees sandstorms in the spring, but Tuesday's storm was exceptional, bringing dust and sand from as far away as Egypt and Libya. (AP Photo/San Francisco Chronicle, Michael Macor)
30 U.S. Marines with 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division, take cover after coming upon a mortar attack during an orange sandstorm on a road south of Baghdad, Iraq on Wednesday, March 26, 2003. (AP Photo/Laura Rauch)
31 Lenny Rodriguez, right, of Queens, forcefully argues in favor of the war with Michael Duce, left, of Manhattan, during a demonstration against the war through Midtown Manhattan, Thursday, March 27, 2003. (Justin Lane/The New York Times)
32 A family leaves the besieged city of Basra as oil fires burn in the distance. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
33 Soldiers of the British Light Infantry distribute aid packages to locals at Zubayr near Basra, southern Iraq, Saturday, March 29, 2003. Significant numbers of Iraqi civilians are trying to leave Basra everyday to get food aid from points around the city before returning. (AP Photo/Brian Roberts)
34 U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Stephen Plumer from Arvada, Colorado of Task Force Tarawa reads a letter from his mother. The Marine was receiving his first mail since leaving Kuwait a week ago. His mother sent him a box of Goldfish snacks, U.S. flags and a letter. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
35 A U.S. Marine from Task Force Tarawa helps a woman with a bag of flour after opening a warehouse. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
36 U.S. Army Chaplain Capt. David Nott comforts Tyler Jordan as the 6-year-old carries the flag that draped the casket of his father, Marine Gunnery Sgt. Phillip A. Jordan. Jordan was killed in action in an ambush near An Nasariya, Iraq. (Bob Falcetti/Getty Images)
37 U.S. soldiers from the 1st Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division assault a military compound in Najaf, Iraq, Wednesday, April 2, 2003. The 101st cleared downtown Najaf Wednesday. (AP Photo/Jean-Marc Bouju)
38 U.S. Marine armored attack vehicle from Task Force Tarawapass a highway sign. The Marines continue to sweep through the country looking for enemy forces. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
39 United States Marines carry a wounded Marine to a helicopter for evacuation to a mobile surgical hospital after after two convoys headed in opposite directions collided on a road south of Baghdad Thursday, April 3, 2003 in central Iraq. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
40 Fellow Marines carry the casket of Marine Capt. Ryan Beaupre out of St. Anne's Catholic Church following his funeral Thursday, April 3, 2003 in Beaupre's home town of St. Anne, Ill. Beaupre died when the helicopter he was piloting crashed in Kuwait last month. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
41 Lt. Jeffrey Goodman, left, and Lance Cpl. Jorge Sanchez, drag a wounded civilian away from his burning vehicle during an advance on Baghdad by the 2nd Tank Battalion Friday, April 4, 2003. The man was injured when he raced into the midst of a battle. (AP Photo, Cheryl Diaz Meyer, Dallas Morning News)
42 Residents of Karbala, Iraq raise their shirts to reveal that they have no weapons as they approach a checkpoint manned by members of Task Force 2-69 Armor, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division from Fort Benning Ga., Friday, April 4, 2003. (AP Photo, Dallas Morning News, David Leeson)
43 U.S. Army 3rd Division Task Force 3-7 soldiers bow their heads in prayer during a Christian worship service for soldiers occupying the Baghdad International Airport. U.S. Forces continue to maintain control of the airfield as other coalition forces continue to make periodic advances into Iraq's capital. (Scott Nelson/Getty Images)
44 A U.S. Marine drags a picture of Saddam Hussein to a burn pile. The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit entered the town looking for weapons and destroying pictures of Saddam Hussein. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
45 A British paratrooper, left, talks with an Iraqi girl while holding his position near the main street in Basra as coalition forces took control of much of Iraq's second city. (Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
46 A picture of Saddam Hussein is set on fire by U.S. Marines. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
47 Villagers celebrate the arrival of the U.S. Marines as the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit entered the town. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
48 U.S. Army Stf. Sgt. Chad Touchett, center, relaxes with comrades from A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, following a search in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces damaged after a bombing, in Baghdad Monday, April 7, 2003.(AP Photo/John Moore)
49 U.S. Marines from the 3rd Batallion yell to urge infantrymen to rush across the damaged Baghdad Highway Bridge, Monday, April 7, 2003, as they move forward into the city while under fire in the southeastern outskirts of Baghdad. (AP Photo/Boston Herald, Kuni Takahashi)
50 A Iraqi man begs for help for himself and his friend after failing to stop as they approached a coalition tank in Baghdad, Tuesday, April 8, 2003. The man lying on the road in the background was shot several times, but was alive and transported to medical help by Charlie Company's 1-64 3rd Infantry Division. Two other men in the car were killed. (Brant Sanderlin/The Atlanta Journal-Consitution via Cox News Service)
51 Iraqis cheer as United States Marines from Task Force Tarawa pass their home as the Marines move through central Iraq. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
52 Soldiers from the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division display a portrait of President Saddam Hussein as they make their way through the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Wednesday April 9, 2003. (AP Photo/Takanori Sekine, Kyodo)
53 Cpl Edward Chin from New York of the 3rd battalion, 4th Marines regiment, set up the star and stripes flag on the face of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's statue before to tear down it, in downtown Bagdad, Wednesday, April 9, 2003. (AP Photo/Laurent Rebours)
54 Ray Fiore screams U-S-A with about during a pro-war rally About 25,000 people attended the rally held near the site of the World Trade Center terrorist attack. (Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)
55 U.S. Marine Corporal Rick Colella from Auburn, New York of Task Force Tarawa prays during an early Palm Sunday service. The Marines are waiting for their next mission. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
56 Family members mourn the death of three male relatives, in Baghdad, Iraq Thursday, April 10, 2003. The three - a father, his teenage son, and another male relative - were shot and killed by U.S. Marines Wednesday night, April 9, after the car they were driving allegedly did not stop while passing a building occupied by U.S. Marines. The victims' relatives were waiting for their return, and did not know about the incident until relatives towed the car, containing the three bodies, to the family's home on Thursday. (AP Photo/Carolyn Cole, Los Angeles Times)
57 First Sgt. Keith Gladden calls an honorary last roll call in front of the fallen comrade memorial display during the memorial service at Fort Sill, Okla., Thursday, April 10. 2003, for three servicemen from Fort Sill who were killed in the war in Iraq. Sgt. 1st Class Randall Rehn, Sgt. Todd Robbins and Spc. Samuel Oaks Jr., shown in photos, from left, were killed in Iraq on April 3. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
58 U.S. Marines with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit stand guard on a field position during a mission. The unit is involved with an operation in the area. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
59 Two Iraqi women carry furniture away from an Iraqi government office building on fire downtown Baghdad Friday April 11 2003. Widespread looting continues in the Iraqi capital. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
60 An Iraqi boy offers some water to a United States Marine of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, while he was out on patrol Friday, April 11, 2003 in a neighborhood near central Baghdad. Marines patrolled through streets in search of any remnants of resistance as well as intelligence on weapons caches or hiding places of enemy forces. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
61 Three Iraqi soldiers sit bound and hooded, waiting to be interrogated by Marines of the Force Recon attachment to the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
62 Former POW Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson, 30, center, is escorted by US soldiers to a waiting C-130 transport plane at an air base, Sunday, April 13, 2003. Johnson was with a convoy of the 507th Maintenance Company that was ambushed March 23 in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. (AP Photo/Wally Santana)
63 U.S. Marines arrest a suspected looter in the street as the U.S. troops search the city to arrest looters and try to bring order to Baghdad on Sunday April 13, 2003. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
64 U.S. Army Third Infantry Division Sgt. Roscoe Archer of Fort Stewart, Georgia catches a nap on a couch in the Republican Presidential Palace. The compound is now guarded and has been secured by the U.S. military. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
65 A U.S Marines arrest an Iraqi prisoner of war after a scuffle in the main Square of Tikrit, April 14, 2003 some175 kilometers - just over 100 miles - north of the capital Baghdad. The Marines captured the city after meeting with little resistance from Saddam Hussein loyalists. (Photo by Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images)
66 A U.S. Marine pulls down a picture of Saddam Hussein at a school. A combination team of Marines, Army and Special Forces went to schools and other facilities in Al-Kut looking for weapons caches and unexploded bombs in preparation for removing and neutralizing them. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
67 A man lies handcuffed with his artificial leg after U.S. Marines caught him and other looters robbing from a bank. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
68 U.S. soldiers sit on top of a tank decorated with portraits of Saddam Hussein outside one of the Presidential Palace complexes Monday, April 28, 2003 in Baghdad, Iraq. Saddam Hussein's 66th birthday arrived Monday with none of the elaborate fanfare of the past and a spate of rumors that the deposed dictator was still alive. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
69 WELCOME HOME NEIGHBOR! Jerri Churchill runs with her American flag to greet her neighbor Lieutenant Colonel Pete Byrne who had just returned to his Parker home after flying F-16s in the Iraq war. Byrne an American Airlines pilot had been mobilized with the 120th Tactical Air Command on February 4th 2003. He returned home today, April 30, 2003 to Buckley Air Force Base with 15 other pilots. Churchill's children play frequently with Byrne's two sons. DENVER POST PHOTO BY CYRUS MCCRIMMON
70 President Bush gives a "thumbs-up" sign after declaring the end of major combat in Iraq as he speaks aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the California coast May 1, 2003. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
71 A woman cries out the name of her missing son as U.S. Marines search for evidence at a mass grave. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
72 U.S. Marine Kirk Straseskie, 23, seen in this undated photo, died Monday after a Sea-Knight helicopter crashed into a canal shortly after takeoff in Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. Straseskie is the first soldier from Wisconsin to die in connection with the war in Iraq and efforts to rebuild the country. The copter crashed into the Shat al-Hillah Canal, U.S. Central Command said in a statement. Four Marines on the helicopter were killed. John Straseskie, 51, said Tuesday his son jumped into the canal after the helicopter crashed to try to rescue the crew. (AP Photo/Los Angeles Times, Rick Loomis)
73 An Iraqi women carries a pail of milk past U.S. Army soldiers from the 299th Engineering Battalion of the Fourth Infantry Division as they carry out a raid. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
74 U.S. Army Lieutenant Andrew Carrigan from Boston, Massachusetts, Corporal Darvick Xiong from Wausaw, Wisconsin and Specialist Steven Payne from Jolo, West Virginia of the 101st Airborne Rakkasans regiment take time out on Halloween day for a donkey race. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
75 Iraqi boy Ayad Alim Brissam Karim shows one of his pictures taken before his accident. US helicopters attacked the vegetable field where he played leaving him with no sight and burns to his face. (Mauricio Lima/AFP/Getty Images)
76 A newly married Iraqi couple walks away from the banks of the Tigris River after posing for photographs. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
77 A man stands near the remains of a building after a massive bomb attack that killed at least 10 people. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
78 A U.S. Army soldier keeps people back from the scene of a destroyed building after a massive bomb attack. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
79 An Iraqi boy holds a leaflet in broken English that reads ?Fallujah, the cemetery of the Americans," near a burning car in the flashpoint town of Fallujah, 50 kms west of Baghdad 31 March 2004. Angry residents armed with shovels mutilated the charred bodies of two people, believed to be foreigners, caught in an insurgents' attack and warned the rebel Iraqi town would be the "cemetery" of US occupation forces. AFP PHOTO/Karim SAHIB
80 Iraqis chant anti-American slogans as charred bodies hang from a bridge over the Euphrates River in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, Wednesday, March 31 2004. Enraged Iraqis in this hotbed of anti-Americanism killed four foreigners Wednesday, including at least one U.S. national, took the charred bodies from a burning SUV, dragged them through the streets, and hung them from the bridge. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
81 Children play on a burned U.S. military vehicle after it was caught in a battle with supporters of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
82 A stunned Marine with Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, wipes his eyes after learning that a fellow Marine in his platoon was seriously injured after being shot in an ambush while on patrol in Fallujah, Iraq, Tuesday, April 6, 2004. The Marine regained his composure and headed into the fight. Insurgents and rebellious Shiites mounted a string of attacks across Iraq's south and U.S. Marines launched a major assault on the turbulent city of Fallujah on Tuesday. Up to a dozen Marines, two more coalition soldiers and at least 66 Iraqis were reported killed. (AP Photo/North County Times, Hayne Palmour IV)
83 U.S. Marines pray over a fallen comrade at a first aid point after he died from wounds suffered in fighting in Fallujah, Iraq, in this April 8, 2004 file photo. (AP Photo/Murad Sezer)
84 Marine Sgt. James Hollon, 24, from Deerpark, Texas, takes a bath at the home that the Marines of Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, have been holding on the northwest side of Fallujah, Iraq on Sunday, April 11, 2004. Hollon said this was the first time in about a month that he's been able to wash himself. (North County Times, Hayne Palmour IV)
85 Cpl. Will McDermott, front, from Phoenix, Ariz and other Marines from the 1st Battalion 5th Marines sleep in their fighting holes in Fallujah, Iraq Thursday, April 22, 2004.(AP Photo/John Moore)
86 In this recent but undated picture made by the US Department of Defense, flag-draped coffins of US war casualties are seen aboard a cargo plane in Dover, Del. A website published photographs of American war dead arriving at the nation's largest military mortuary from Iraq and Afghanistan, and a NASA spokesman said that at least 18 rows of photos on the site were of the Columbia astronauts. The photographs were released to First Amendment activist Russ Kick, who had filed a Freedom of Information Act request. (AP Photo/thememoryhole.org)
87 A photo obtained by the Washington Post and released Thursday, May 6, 2004, shows a soldier identified as U.S. Army Spc. Lynndie England, 21, of the 372nd Military Police Company with a naked detainee at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad date unknown. (AP Photo/The Washington Post)
88 U.S. Marines with the 1st Expeditionary Force play baseball at their base near Fallujah, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2004. U.S. forces are making preparations for a big offensive to retake the rebel-held western cities of Fallujah and Ramadi ahead of nationwide Iraqi elections due in January. (Ashley Gilbertson/The New York Times)
89 US Marines of the 1st Division raid the house of a city council chairman in the Abu Ghraib district of Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2004. The Marines arrested the city council chairman of Nasar Wa Sulaan, Baghdad, Taha Rasheed and other council members following the raid. American forces are preparing for a major assault on Fallujah in an effort to restore control to a swath of Sunni Muslim towns north and west of the capital ahead of crucial national elections due by Jan. 31. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
90 A U.S. Marine takes cover in a ditch as a Bradley fighting vehicle patrols nearby as US troops received heavy fire in Falluja, Monday, Nov. 8, 2004. (Shawn Baldwin/New York Times)
91 Insurgents, using small arms and mortars, launch an attack on U.S. forces in Fallujah, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 8, 2004. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
92 U.S. Marines of the 1st Division take position on the outskirts of Fallujah, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 8, 2004. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
93 U.S. Marines advance down a street in Fallujah, Iraq, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2004, as U.S. forces punched into the center of the insurgent stronghold, overwhelming bands of guerrillas in the street with heavy barrages of fire and searching house to house in a powerful advance on the second day of a major offensive. (AP Photo/Los Angeles Times, Luis Sinco)
94 US Marine of the 1st Division push further into the western part of Fallujah, Iraq, Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004. U.S. military officials said Saturday that US Forces had now "occupied" the entire city of Fallujah. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
95 A U.S. Marine of the 1st Division carries a mascot for good luck in his backpack as his unit pushed further into the western part of Fallujah, Iraq, Sunday, Nov. 14, 2004. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
96 US Marines of the 1st division enter a house to take up position in the western part of Fallujah, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 15, 2004. U.S. ground forces were trying to corner the remaining resistance in the city. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
97 Samar Hassan, 5, screams after her parents were killed by U.S. Soldiers with the 25th Infantry Division in a shooting. The troops fired on the Hassan family car when it unwittingly approached them during a dusk patrol. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
98
99 Fallujah, Iraq | June 2005 U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Shawn Spicher, from Hemet, California, is reflected in a mirror at his field base. Spicher, 21, with the Third Battalion, Fourth Marines, participated in combat in Fallujah and elsewhere during his two tours in Iraq, and has learned "that this life can be over in an instant." Marines with the Third Battalion, Fourth Marines have had a storied history in Iraq, which includes being the U.S. troops that famously pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, and leading the first assault on Fallujah in April 2004.(Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
100 David Stibbs, stepfather of fallen Marine Lance Cpl. Evenor C. Herrera, weeps over his son's casket . Herrera was killed last week in Iraq when a bomb exploded during combat. (Preston Utley/Vail Daily)
101 This video image released by Iraqi state television shows Saddam Hussein's guards wearing ski masks and placing a noose around the deposed leader's neck moments before his execution Saturday Dec. 30. 2006. Clutching a Quran and refusing a hood, Saddam Hussein went to the gallows before sunrise Saturday, executed by vengeful countrymen after a quarter-century of remorseless brutality that killed countless thousands and led Iraq into disastrous wars against the United States and Iran. (AP Photo/IRAQI TV, HO)
102 Lance Corporal Jason Derks (L) and Lance Corporal Daniel Patrick, who both returned from the war wounded, mourn for their fallen companions of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment as the Marines of Regimental Combat Team 5 (RCT-5 ) memorialize 100 Marines, soldiers, and sailors who died during the regiment's 12-month deployment to fight in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq on February 15, 2007 at Camp Pendleton, California. The RCT-5 was assigned to cultivate the combat capabilities of the Iraqi Security Forces in the greater Fallujah region and helped facilitate the expansion of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Iraqi Division's battlespace in Fallujah proper and saw the repositioning of Marines to the edges of the city. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
103 Baghdad, Iraq | February 2007 A U.S. soldier in the 10th Mountain Division winces in pain as his gunshot wound to the leg is treated by medics of the 28th Combat Support Hospital based in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. Wounded children and adults were rushed to the 28th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad, a military hospital that takes wounded Iraqi and U.S. forces alike. The boy had shrapnel wounds and a piece of shrapnel lodged in his skull but is expected to recover. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
104 Protesters call for the impeachment of President George Bush and Vice President Cheney at the State Capitol. Several hundred anti-war protesters marched through downtown Denver, starting at the downtown Denver office for Halliburton and walking down the 16th Street mall to the State Capitol building. The rally marked the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq. (Karl Gehring/The Denver Post)
105 Seen through splintered bullet-proof glass, US soldiers from 2-12 Infantry Battalion examine their damaged Humvee after an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) detonated on the vehicle, following a patrol. On the anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq US soldiers still face daily attacks on the streets of the war-torn capital. (David Furst/AFP/Getty Images)
106 A US soldier from 2-12 Infantry Battalion calls out to his comrades to see if they are injured seconds after an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) detonated on the vehicle during a patrol in the predominantly Sunni al-Dora neighborhood. (David Furst/AFP/Getty Images)
107 A U.S. Army solider of the B-CO 2/325 AIR 82nd Airborne Division and an Iraqi interpreter order cheese from a local store. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
108 U.S. Army Sergeant 1st Class Jerry Byrd from Taft, Calif., of the B-CO 2/325 AIR 82nd Airborne Division rides a childs bike during a light moment on patrol. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
109 U.S. Army soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division are reflected in a store window as they patrol through the streets. The soldiers are part of the U.S. increase in military presence in Iraq, a move, coming amid growing domestic opposition to the war, that aims to quell spiraling violence in the capitol. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
110 A woman tries to plead her case to a U.S. Army soldier of D-CO 2/325 AIR 82nd Airborne Division after they arrested her relatives for possible connection with insurgents. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
111 A woman cries over the dead body of a relative as U.S. Army soldiers of the D-CO 2/325 AIR 82nd Airborne Division investigate the shooting while they are on patrol. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
112 School children react to U.S. Army Specialist Ron Kreiger from Schuylkill Haven, Penn. of the D-CO 2/325 AIR 82nd Airborne Division visiting their school. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
113 A U.S. Army soldier of the D-CO 2/325 AIR 82nd Airborne Division searches people after asking them to get out of their vehicles during a traffic stop. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
114 U.S. Army (L-R) Private First Class Eli Salaz from Denver, Colorado, Specialist Robert Ruiz from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Specialist Trey Mckinney from Amarillo, Texas and Specialist Angel Hernandez from San Diego, California of the D-CO 2/325 AIR 82nd Airborne Division play a game of dominoes and read a book as they relax at combat outpost Ford. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
115 U.S. Marines of Echo Company 2 battalion, 7th Marines try to catch a calf that broke lose during a security patrol. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
116 U.S. Marine Corporal Anthony Williams from Gig Harbor, Washington of Golf Company 2 battalion, 7th Marines wears a United States Marine Corps tattoo on his back. The Marines are part of the United States military effort to control the violence in Iraq. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
117 U.S. Marine Corporal Anthony Williams from Gig Harbor, Washington of Golf Company 2 battalion, 7th Marines talks on the radio during a security patrol. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
118 A man walks behind U.S. Marine Corporal Jakob Willmann of Mobile, Ala. Assault Platoon 3 of Weapons Company 2 Battalion, 7th Marines during a security patrol. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
119 A US soldier stands guards at a school. (Mohammed Sawwaf/AFP/Getty Images)
120 Mary McHugh mourns her slain fiance Sgt. James Regan at "Section 60" of the Arlington National Cemetery. Regan, a US Army Ranger, was killed by an IED explosion in Iraq in February of this year, and this was the first time McHugh had visited the grave since the funeral. Section 60, the newest portion of the vast national cemetery on the outskirts of Washington D.C, contains hundreds of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Family members of slain American soldiers have flown in from across the country for Memorial Day. (John Moore/Getty Images)
121 Women sip tea and look on nervously as the man of the house, suspected of being a terrorist bomb financier, is questioned by U.S. troops. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
122 Adrea Castillo (L) hugs her father Army SGT Guillermo Castillo during the singing of the singing of the Army Song during a Purple Heart ceremony. SGT Castillo was wounded by an IED blast in Iraq. Twenty members of the US armed forces were awarded the Purple Heart for being wounded while serving in the war on terror. (Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)
123 Pft. Daniel Sims of Clemson, South Carolina of the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment of the U.S. Army sits during watch duties in a partially destroyed building that's being converted to an Army field post. Insurgents who were in control of Amariyah until recently attempted to destroy this building and an adjacent bunker with explosives and burning tires, but the Army was able to salvage the compound and is now occupying it. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
124 SFC. Richard Gregory of the National Police Transition Team (NPTT) with the U.S. Army Bravo Comp. 212 Cavalry speaks to residents about concerns regarding security and utilities. Progress has made in recent months in Ghazaliya in combating extremists who were threatening the populace and fighting coalition troops. ( Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
125 An Iraqi woman and her child walk past U.S. Army Humvees patrolling a neighborhood. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
126 Members of the U.S.Army Alpha Company 82nd Airborne run up to a roof while searching an area immediately after rockets were fired by insurgents. The Bush administration has rejected an appeal by Republican Senator John Warner asking Bush to announce by Sept. 15 a plan to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
127 Protesters march past the U.S. Capitol during an anti-war march. Activists marched around DC passing federal buildings to protest the war in Iraq. (Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)
128 An Iraqi woman shouts "Don't shoot!" as US soldiers from Alpha Company, 1/38 Infantry Regiment detain her son and husband (L), who are suspected of targeting their Stryker convoy with an IED. Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images)
129 Junior ROTC cadets are reflected in a store window as they march in a parade during a Veterans Day ceremony. Veterans Day honors military veterans from all wars that the United States has fought. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
130 US soldiers with the 101st Airborne rest after conducting a house-to-house search. Hints of US military progress in Iraq are shifting the political ground under Democratic White House candidates, and boosting the spirits of Republicans who have taken a beating over the unpopular war. (Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images)
131 A view of crosses marking soldiers lost during the war in Iraq is seen at Arlington West on Santa Monica Beach, California, 25 November 2007. Each Sunday from sunup to sundown since 15 February, 2004, the temporary memorial is erected in the sand just north of the pier at Santa Monica Beach by the local chapter of Veterans for Peace (VFP) and other volunteers. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS
132 Iraqi children look at US soldiers from Bravo company, 1st Battalion, 38 regiment infantry as they search Iraqi houses for weapons and suspects as part of the operation 'Rock Hammer 5'. (Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images)
133 Sgt. First Class Steven Lee of Maumae, Ohio with the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry pauses in the pre-dawm hours before his men board Stryker vehicles en route to house to house searches. It was the soldiers first visit to the area since two of their comrades died there two weeks ago, killed by a roadside bomb that detonated during a dismounted patrol. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
134 A US soldier from the 2nd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, plays with a young girl during a patrol. (Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)
135 U.S. President George W. Bush winks while delivering his final State of the Union address as Vice President Dick Cheney (L) looks on at the U.S. Capitol January 28, 2008 in Washington, DC. Bush, in his last address, spoke on such topics as the uncertainty of the economy, the status of the war in Iraq, and immigration reform. (Photo by Pool via Getty Images) Mary McHugh mourns her slain fiance Sgt. James Regan at "Section 60" of the Arlington National Cemetery May 27, 2007. Regan, a US Army Ranger, was killed by an IED explosion in Iraq in February of this year, and this was the first time McHugh had visited the grave since the funeral. Section 60, the newest portion of the vast national cemetery on the outskirts of Washington D.C, contains hundreds of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Family members of slain American soldiers have flown in from across the country for Memorial Day. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) # Members of the Honor Guard ready themselves next to the gravesite for a burial service for Army Spc. Camy Florexil at Arlington National Cemetery October 5, 2007 in Arlington, Virginia. Spc. Florexil, 20, of Philadelphia, died July 24 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) # Military veteran Benjamin Troy salutes at a gravesite in section 60 on Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery May 28, 2007 in Arlington, Virginia. This section of the cemetery is where U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and the Afghanistan war are buried. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) # Nine-year-old MarcAnthony Davis rests his head on the American flag that covered his father's casket during burial services for Master Sgt. Anthony Davis at Arlington National Cemetery December 9, 2008 in Arlington, Virginia. Master Sgt. Anthony Davis, 43, of Deerfield, Florida, died November 25 in Baaj, Iraq, after being shot by an Iraqi Security Force soldier while he was conducting a dismounted humanitarian food drop. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) # Veterans and family members of slain American soldiers pay their respects during the playing of "Amazing Grace" in "Section 60" of the Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day May 28, 2007 in Arlington, Virginia. Section 60, the newest burial area in the vast military cemetery on the outskirts of the capital, is reserved for soldiers who died in the Iraq and Afghan wars. At an annual speech at the cemetery, President George Bush paid tribute to fallen American soldiers, telling family members that Americans "will never forget the terrible loss you have suffered." More than 300,000 veterans and their dependants are buried at the cemetery. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) # A caisson team at Arlington National Cemetery returns to Fort Myer during the first snowfall of the year December 5, 2007 in Arlington, Virginia. The greater Washington, DC area was expected to get up to 3 inches of snow. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) # A red lipstick mark is covered with snow on the tombstone of Douglas E. Sloan at Arlington National Cemetery during the first snowfall of the year December 5, 2007 in Arlington, Virginia. Sloan was killed in "Operation Enduring Freedom." The greater Washington, DC area was expected to get up to 3 inches of snow. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) # Crystal Lewis (R) and her daughter Morgan Lewis sit at the gravesite of Morgan's high school sweetheart, U.S. Marine Nicholas Cain Kirven, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2005, on Memorial Day at section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery May 28, 2007 in Arlington, Virginia. This section of the cemetery is where U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and the Afghanistan war are buried. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) # U.S. Marine Honor Guard bugler plays taps during an interment funeral ceremony for U.S. Marine Cp.l Mark David Kidd, of Milford, Michigan, at Arlington National Cemetery August 14, 2007 in Arlington, Virginia. Kidd who was killed at a checkpoint in the Al Anbar province of Iraq last January, was buried at Arlington after being interred and then exhumed in his home state of Michigan. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) # Stones painted with thoughts from friends and family and colored glass sit atop a headstone in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery March 24, 2008 in Arlington, Virginia. A new milestone was reached yesterday as more than 4,000 U.S. troops have been killed in the war in Iraq. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) # Nine-year-old MarcAnthony Davis (R) is hugged by his mother, Maj. Anna Davis, during burial services for Master Sgt. Anthony Davis at Arlington National Cemetery December 9, 2008 in Arlington, Virginia. Master Sgt. Anthony Davis, 43, of Deerfield, Florida, died November 25 in Baaj, Iraq, after being shot by an Iraqi Security Force soldier while he was conducting a dismounted humanitarian food drop. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) # U.S. Army Capt. Ed Arntson of Chicago, Illinois kisses the grave of Staff Sgt. Henry Linck, who was killed in Iraq in 2006, in Arlington National Cemetery May 21, 2009 in Arlington, Virginia. It took 1,300 soldiers, sailors and Marines about three hours to place a flag at each of the more than 300,000 gravestones at Arlington ahead of the Memorial Day weekend. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) # A soldier sits at a grave in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery May 25, 2009 in Arlington, Virginia. Section 60 is one of the main places where those who died while serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images) # Rebecca Baldeosingh reaches out to touch the casket of her husband, Sgt. Juan Carlos Baldeosingh, accompanied by her daughters (L-R) Kylie, Emily and Isabella at the conclusion of burial services at Arlington National Cemetery August 4, 2009 in Arlington, Virginia. Baldeosingh and three fellow North Carolina soldiers died late last month when a roadside bomb hit their Humvee in Iraq. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) # The draw-down process is in full gear, but the future for a still-recovering, still-violent Iraq remains uncertain. Since coalition forces first invaded Iraq in March 2003, more than 4,400 Americans have lost their lives and some 32,000 have been wounded. Estimates of violent civilian deaths -- caused by warfare, insurgent attacks, inter-tribal conflict and more -- range into the hundreds of thousands. As the new Iraqi government still struggles to meet the needs of its citizens, it now faces the challenge of defending its borders in a very volatile region. Although all American troops are scheduled to leave by the end of 2011, the U.S. military will continue limited counterterrorism training with Iraqi forces beyond the end of the year, and about 16,000 U.S. embassy personnel will remain in Iraq -- many of them civilian contractors handling security. Collected here are recent images of Iraq -- its people, the U.S. draw-down, and some of the continuing aftermath of the war. Sgt. 1st Class Justin Hathaway braves a sandstorm after leaving the 9th Air and Space Expeditionary Task Force-Iraq and U.S. Forces-Iraq Provost Marshal Office at Al Asad Air Base, Iraq, on September 27, 2011. (Master Sgt. Cecilio Ricardo/USAF)
Soldiers with the 1452nd Combat Heavy Equipment Transportation Company, North Carolina Army National Guard, load an M1 Abrams tank onto the bed of a super heavy equipment transporter tractor-trailer on Contingency Operating Base Adder, on November 4, 2011. The 1452nd loaded two of the 60-ton tanks to transport to Kuwait in support of the U.S. Forces drawdown in Iraq. (Pvt. Andrew Slovensky/U.S. Army) # U.S. soldiers begin their journey home at al-Asad airbase, west of Baghdad, Iraq, on November 1, 2011. Gen. Lloyd Austin The top American general in Iraq said Monday that al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups might seek to strengthen their operations after American forces leave at the end of the year. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File) # A U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter flies over the city of Baghdad, Iraq, on November 7, 2011. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) # An Iraqi woman rides on a donkey as another follows close by, as they skirt a huge concrete blast wall protecting an Iraqi army camp, in the Ghazaliya district of Baghdad, on August 30, 2011. (Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images) # A worker repairs an oil pipeline at Rumaila oil fields, near the southern city of Basra, Iraq, on October 9, 2011. A pair of bombs struck two oil pipelines on Friday in southern Iraq, causing a temporary cut in production at the country's largest oil field, officials said. (AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani) # U.S. Army Lt. Christopher Chavez, 28, from Sacramento, California, center, and Staff Sgt. Michael Snyder, left, 35, from Glendale, Arizona, of D Company, 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, search a Saddam Hussein-era military vehicle graveyard outside Contingency Operating Site Taji, north of Baghdad, on August 7, 2011. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) # A female taxi driver fetches a passenger in Arbil, about 350 km (220 miles) north of Baghdad, on November 19, 2011. Inspired by the success stories of the ladies' taxis services in Lebanon and Dubai, 25-year old civil engineer Lana Khoshabaan has recently started an all-women taxi firm, in the Kurdish city of Arbil. The black cars, imprinted with the words "PNK TAXI" are dispatched upon calls to pick up female passengers from all parts of Arbil. Currently, only three cars are in operation on two shifts daily. (Reuters/Azad Lashkari) # An Iraqi man checks the many electricity wires attached to a pylon as the capital endures another stifling summer with only a few hours of electricity a day, on August 7, 2011. (Sabah Arar/AFP/Getty Images) # People celebrate after the Iraqi national soccer team beat Jordan in the World Cup qualifying match, in Karradah, downtown Baghdad, on November 15, 2011. Iraq won 3-1. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban) # U.S. soldiers rest in the shade of armored vehicles at a courtyard at Camp Liberty in Baghdad, on September 30, 2011. (Reuters/Mohammed Ameen) # Humvees sit parked in a courtyard at Camp Liberty in Baghdad, on September 30, 2011. (Reuters/Mohammed Ameen) # Residents play at a bowling hall in Iraq's northern province of Arbil, on September 25. While most Iraqis struggle under the detritus of a seven-year war, the people of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan can frolic in a public pool, ride an elevated cable car over freshly planted parkland or escape stifling heat in a new ice skating hall. The new luxuries of Iraq's northern Kurdish region seem a world apart from the dust and grit of Baghdad, where suicide bombers are an everyday fear, dirt-gray blast walls dominate a war-weary cityscape. (Reuters/Azad Lashkari) # A man inspects the scene of a bomb attack in Kerbala, Iraq, on September 25, 2011. A series of blasts hit a Shiite holy city in Iraq on Sunday, killing and wounding scores of people, police and hospital officials said. (AP Photo/Ahmed al-Husseini) # Warning: An Iraqi man runs with an injured child following an explosion in the central Iraqi shrine city of Kerbala, on September 25, 2011, as multiple blasts at a passport and identity card office killed at least nine people, part of nationwide violence that left 12 dead. (Mohammed Sawaf/AFP/Getty Images) # Mourners carry the coffins of slain Shiite pilgrims during their funeral in the holy city of Karbala, on September 13, 2011. The victims were killed when gunmen forced their way onto a bus of traveling Shiite pilgrims Monday and shot all 22 men aboard as they traveled through western Iraq's remote desert on a trip to a holy shrine, security officials said. (AP Photo/Ahmed al-Husseini) # Copies of the Quran, Muslims holy book, splattered with blood, at Um al-Qura mosque in Baghdad, Iraq, on August 29, 2011. A suicide bomber blew himself up inside Baghdad's largest Sunni mosque, killing dozens during prayers, a shocking strike on a place of worship similar to the one that brought Iraq to the brink of civil war five years before. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) # U.S. soldiers tour Al-Faw palace within Victory Base Compound before it is handed over to the Iraqi government in Baghdad, on November 7, 2011. (Reuters/Saad Shalash) # Abdulrazaq Al-Aboudy paints in his studio in an artist's market on July 26, 2011, in Baghdad, Iraq. Iraqi painters have long held a prominent place in Iraqi society painting on commission and for sale in galleries throughout the Middle East. The market is beginning to flourish again as violence in the capital has stabilized allowing for galleries to reopen and for more money to move into the country. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) # Two girls wait for their father's arrival from his deployment with the Headquarters Battalion from the 25th Infantry Lightning Brigade in Iraq to Schofield Barracks, in Wahiawa, Hawaii, on November 21, 2011, as part of the gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. (Reuters/Hugh Gentry) # Bryan Anderson talks about his new book titled "No Turning Back," at his home in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, on October 31, 2011. His story details enlisting with the Army and receiving a deployment date of September 11, 2001, serving two tours in Iraq as a sergeant in the military police, driving over a roadside bomb in his Humvee in October 2005, and recovering for 13 months at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he was one of the few triple amputees to survive. (AP Photo/Daily Herald, Bob Chwedyk) # Inside the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C., a gold AK-47 assault rifle and sniper rifle that once belonged to former Iraq President Saddam Hussein sit in a display case on Thursday, September 29, 2011. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen) # A U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon from the 79th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron provides cover for U.S. forces as they transition personnel and equipment out of Iraq, on November 9, 2011. (Master Sgt. Cecilio Ricardo/USAF) # U.S. Army Pvt. 1st Class David Hedge from Bealeton, Virginia, front, and fellow soldiers from 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment are bathed in rotor wash moments after arriving by Blackhawk helicopter for an operation to disrupt weapons smuggling in Istaqlal, north of Baghdad, Iraq, on August 8, 2011. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) # Residents visit the Spiral Minaret of the Great Mosque in Samarra, 100 km (62 miles) north of Baghdad, on August 30, 2011. (Reuters/Stringer) # Ahmed Razak, 31, works at a blacksmith shop in Baghdad, on November 12, 2011. Razak earns about 9 US dollars per day. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban) # Iranian goods are displayed at a shop in Baghdad, on November 6, 2011. Iran's presence is already visible in Iraq, from the droves of pilgrims at Shiite holy sites to the brands of yogurt and jams on grocery shelves. But now Iraqis are bracing for a potential escalation of Persian influence as the U.S. military leaves at the end of the year. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim) # Iraqi security forces display suspected insurgents to the public after detaining the suspected insurgents in Kerbala, on September 15, 2011. About eight suspected insurgents were arrested during a raid operation in the nearby province of Anbar on Thursday, a police source said. (Reuters/Stringer) # An Iraqi Army M1A1 Abrams tank, purchased from the U.S., maneuvers during a live fire exercise outside Baghdad, on October 18, 2011. With the U.S. military scheduled to leave Iraq by the end of the year, the Iraqi security forces will be solely responsible for providing security for the country. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) # Russian tourists sit on a boat as they travel through the marshlands in Basra, on October 12, 2011. Nine Russian tourists visited Basra, an official at Basra province said. Foreign tourists have visited Iraq, part of a region known as the cradle of civilization, from time to time after decades of war and the peak of sectarian violence in 2006-07, although bombings and killings still take place daily. (Reuters/Atef Hassan) # Saadia Hamid bathes her two-year old twin daughters Fatema Abbas, left, Zainab Abbas, right, in Baghdad, on July 23, 2011. (AP Photo / Hadi Mizban) # An Iraqi man inspects damages at the Mar Afram Syriac Orthodox Church following an explosion in the northern city of Kirkuk, on August 15, 2011 as a series of nationwide attacks hit the country. At least 41 people were killed and 90 wounded in a spate of violence across Iraq, just months ahead of a pullout of US forces. (Marwan Ibrahim/AFP/Getty Images) # An Iraqi boy is taken away from a suspected militant, who has been accused of killing his father at the height of the sectarian slaughter in 2006-07, during a presentation to the media at the Interior Ministry in Baghdad, on November 21, 2011. A total of 22 suspected militants were presented to the media on Monday as they await their trial, according to the police. (Reuters/Saad Shalash) # Vessels are docked at the Al-Basra terminal in southern Iraq, on September 28, 2011. Iraq expects to turn on the tap at one of three new oil export terminals in the Gulf on January 1, 2012, a major milestone in its effort to build export capacity to handle increasing output from southern oilfields. (Reuters/Atef Hassan) # A contract worker picks recyclable items from trash at U.S. military base Kalsu on July 18, 2011 in Iskandariya, Iraq. Preparations for the drawdown of troops at the base are ongoing with clean-ups, packing and the shipping of items back to the United States. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) # 1st Lt. Mark Lowett, Marine Corps Martial Arts instructor assigned to Iraqi Marine Training Team Three, performs a preliminary visual inspection of vehicles prior to their departure from Umm Qasr to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, on October 14, 2011. The 13 members of the training team were the last Marines in Iraq in support of Operation New Dawn. Major operations in Iraq for the Marine Corps ended in 2010. (Cpl. Lucas Vega/USMC) # Mustafa Mohammed, born only ten minutes before, is surrounded by his family at a maternity hospital sponsored by the Iraqi Red Crescent Society in Baghdad, Iraq, on October 30, 2011. According to Iraq's Health Ministry, Iraq witnesses the birth of more than one million children every year. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) # Sgt. Aaron Grudich of Oakfield, Wisconsin, walks back to the car with his family after returning from Iraq at the West Bend Armory, on November 19, 2011, in West Bend, Wisconsin. Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 135th General Aviation Support Battalion returned home from Iraq. After 51 weeks, the last Wisconsin National Guard Unit returned home. (AP Photo/West Bend Daily News, John Ehlke) # A transfer case containing the remains of Army Spc. David E. Hickman sits on a loader during a prayer at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, on November 16, 2011. According to the Department of Defense, Hickman, 23, of Greensboro, North Carolina, died November 14, 2011 in Baghdad, Iraq of injuries sustained after encountering an improvised explosive device. (AP Photo/Steve Ruark) # Iraq War veteran Brad Hammond holds the hand of his 18-month-old son Cooper at a softball game, on September 23, 2011 in Lakewood, Colorado. Seven years after returning home from a year-long deployment in Tal Afar, Iraq, Hammond continues to experience severe post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the effects of traumatic brain injuries he sustained in combat. He suffers from chronic anxiety, headaches, night terrors, hallucinations and frequent bouts of aggression and cannot hold down a full time job. He helps his wife Dani care for their three children, while also taking a private mentoring classes to help improve his attention and cognitive skills. Hammond was on a team of U.S. soldiers who opened fire on a carload of Iraqi civilians on January 18, 2005 in Tal Afar, Iraq, killing two, when they did not stop at a checkpoint. (John Moore/Getty Images) # The scarred hands of 12-year-old Iraqi Khitam Hamad, as she participates in a class with other young victims of Iraq violence at a program operated by Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), on July 28, 2011 in Amman, Jordan. Khitam, who is from the city of Fallujah, was severely burned following a car bomb when she was walking with her sister. MSF has been running a reconstructive-surgery program for war-wounded Iraqis since August 2006. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) # Iraq War's 10th Anniversary: The Invasion.A decade ago, the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq on the premise that the country was hiding weapons of mass destruction. Despite worldwide protest and a lack of UN authorization, 200,000 thousand troops deployed into Iraq in March of 2003, following massive airstrikes. The coalition faced minimal opposition, and Baghdad quickly fell. For years after President George W. Bush's "mission accomplished" speech, the war raged on, fueled by sectarian conflicts, al Qaeda insurgencies, outside agencies, and mismanagement of the occupation. Ten years later, we look back in a three-part series. Smoke covers Saddam Hussein's presidential palace compound during a massive US-led air raid on Baghdad, Iraq on March 21, 2003. Allied forces unleashed a devastating blitz on Baghdad, triggering giant fireballs and deafening explosions and sending huge mushroom clouds above the city center. Missiles slammed into the main palace complex of President Saddam Hussein on the bank of the Tigris River, and key government buildings. (Ramzi Haidar/AFP/Getty Images) U.S. President George W. Bush, watched by Vice President Dick Cheney, speaks before signing a $355 billion military spending bill in the Rose Garden of the White House October 23, 2002. The bill gave the Pentagon a nearly $40 billion boost as it prepared for possible war with Iraq, the White House said. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque) # Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, center, talks with elite Republican Guard officers in Baghdad, on March 1, 2003. Iraq began destroying its Al Samoud 2 missiles Saturday as ordered by the United Nations and agreed with weapons inspectors on a timetable to dismantle the entire missile program, U.N. and Iraqi officials said. (AP Photo/INA) # Iraqi soldiers march in the courtyard of the Martyrs Monument in Baghdad, on February 16, 2003.(Reuters/Suhaib Salem) # Secretary of State Colin Powell holds up a vial he said could contain anthrax as he presents evidence of Iraq's alleged weapons programs to the United Nations Security Council in this February 5, 2003 photo. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola) # Protests against war in Iraq erupted around the world in March of 2003. This combination photo shows (from top left) large demonstrations in Madrid, New York, Jakarta, Calcutta, Rome, (2nd row) London, Berlin, Marseille, San Francisco, and Montevideo. (Credit, in same order: Reuters, AP Photo/Louis Lanzano, Reuters/Pipit Prahara, Reuters/Sucheta Das, Reuters/Giampiero Sposito, Reuters/Peter Macdiarmid, AP Photo/Franka Bruns, AP Photo/Claude Paris, AP Photo/Noah Berger, and AP Photo/Marcelo Hernandez) # British Royal Air Force personnel wait in a bunker wearing full Nuclear Biological and Chemical suits after a warning of a Scud missile attack on their base in Kuwait March 20, 2003. (Reuters/Russell Boyce) # U.S. President George W. Bush announced the start of war between the United States and Iraq during a televised address from the Oval Office, on March 19, 2003. The United States said it had began its war against Iraq just minutes after several explosions were heard over Baghdad. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque) # US Marines from the 2nd battalion/8 MAR, prepare themselves after receiving orders to cross the Iraqi border at Camp Shoup, northern Kuwait, on March 20, 2003. (Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images) # An explosion rocks Baghdad during air strikes on March 21, 2003. The attacks far exceeded strikes that launched the war the previous day, Reuters correspondents said. (Reuters/Goran Tomasevic) # An assault convoy of trucks and armored vehicles of the 101st Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team prepare to cross into Iraq, on March 21, 2003. (Reuters/US Army/Robert Woodward) # An aviation ordnance man observes rows of bombs on the hangar bay of the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier in the northern Gulf, on March 30, 2003. The carriers airwing flew 104 total sorties over Iraq on March 29, and dropped bombs on targets including air defense sites, a train loaded with tanks and a surface-to-air missile site. (Reuters/Paul Hanna) # A U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber returns from a mission over Iraq, after refueling from a KC-10 plane over the Black Sea, on March 28, 2003. (AP Photo/Jockel Finck) # Palls of black smoke from raging oil fires billow over Baghdad, on March 27, 2003. The oil-filled trenches were set off by Iraqis to try and block the visibility of U.S. warplanes and missiles. (Reuters/Goran Tomasevic) # Soldiers from the 3rd Brigade of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division rest in foxholes by their convoy in a staging area in the Kuwaiti desert, on, March 21, 2003. (AP Photo/Jean-Marc Bouju) # Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf reads a message to the Iraqi people from President Saddam Hussein broadcast on Iraqi television, April 1, 2003. In the message Saddam said that jihad was a religious duty and he urged the Iraqi people to fight invading U.S. and British troops wherever they found them. (Reuters/Iraqi television) # An Iraqi officer is held by US Marines with India Company 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division following a gunfight at the headquarters of the Iraqi 51st and 32nd mechanized infantry divisions near Az Bayer, Iraq on March 21, 2003.(AP Photo/Laura Rauch) # Coalition forces commander U.S. Army General Tommy Franks tells reporters that the military campaign is on track during a press conference in the media center at Camp As Sayliyah, outside Doha, Qatar, on March 30, 2003.(Reuters/Tim Aubry) # Iraqi soldiers stand together with their arms raised, silhouetted against a sky covered with black smoke as they surrender to U.S. Marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit in southern Iraq, on March 21, 2003. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye) # British Household Cavalry Scimitar tanks drive past burning oil wells in Southern Iraq, on March 20, 2003. (Reuters) # U.S. Marine Lt. Ben Reid from 1/2 Charlie Company of Task Force Tarawa waits to be medivaced after being hit with shrapnel and a machine gun round, in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, on March 23, 2003. The Marines suffered a number of deaths and casualties during gun battles throughout the city. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) # Iraqi civilians scream for help as they are caught in the crossfire while marines from the U.S. Marine Expeditionary Unit Fox Company "Raiders" push into southern Iraq to take control of the main port of Umm Qasr on March 21, 2003.(Reuters/Desmond Boylan) # U.S. Marines from the 15 Marine Expeditionary Unit fire a shoulder-launched Javelin missile during a battle with Iraqi troops at the port in Umm Qasr, Iraq, on March 23, 2003. (AP Photo/Simon Walker, The London Times) # U.S. Marines with 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division, return fire after coming upon a mortar attack during an orange sandstorm on a road south of Baghdad, on March 26, 2003. (AP Photo/Laura Rauch) # Ray Jacques reads the San Francisco Chronicle's war special section inside a Starbucks coffee shop in San Francisco, in this March 20, 2003 photo. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) # A statue of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, at his palace, damaged during a U.S. led air strike in Baghdad, on March 23, 2003. (Reuters/Faleh Kheiber) # Lit by Hummvee headlights, a soldier from the 3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division guards Iraqis who were intercepted during dust storm on the perimeter of the division's forward base in south Central Iraq, on March 26, 2003.(AP Photo/Jean-Marc Bouju) # Two Iraqi children look through their window in New Baghdad, a suburb of Baghdad, on March 24, 2003. Oil fires burned across the city as a defense against incoming US missiles and bombs. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay) # A U.S. Army combat engineer enjoys a cigarette as he relaxes between the cities of Najaf and Karbala as another sandstorm turned the daylight orange, on March 26, 2003. (Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach) # A body of Iraqi man lies by the road side north of Al Nassiriyah, on March 25, 2003. More than 30 men of military age were killed on the key northern highway by an apparent U.S. air strike on the vehicles carrying the Iraqis.(Reuters/Damir Sagolj) # A British Warrior armored combat vehicle knocks over a picture of Saddam Hussein in the city of Basra, in southern Iraq, on March 24, 2003. (Reuters/Mark Richards) # In this image from video seen on Iraqi television on March 27, 2003, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein meets with high-ranking Ba'ath party officials. (AP Photo/Iraqi TV via APTN) # An Iraqi soldier fires his AK-47 rifle into reeds on the banks of the Tigris river in Baghdad, on March 23, 2003 after reports that U.S. or British pilots may have ejected over the city. Television reports showed Iraqi soldiers shooting into the Tigris river and in boats, apparently searching the water for pilots. (Reuters/Goran Tomasevic) # U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman HM1 Richard Barnett, assigned to the 1st Marine Division, holds an Iraqi child in central Iraq, on March 29, 2003. Confused front line crossfire ripped apart an Iraqi family after local soldiers appeared to force civilians towards positions held by U.S. Marines. (Reuters/Damir Sagolj) # A U.S. Army soldier atop a Humvee armed with a heavy machine gun secures an area by a burning oil well in Iraq's vast southern Rumaila oilfields, on March 30, 2003. U.S. engineers moved through the oilfields on Sunday shutting down wellheads in an operation that could take months to complete. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis) # U.S. Marines from Lima Company, a part of a 7-th Marine Regiment, walk in front of the Martyrs Monument, during an operation to secure securing the center of Baghdad on April 9, 2003. (Reuters/Oleg Popov) # A wounded Iraqi girl is treated by U.S. marines in central Iraq, on March 29, 2003. The four-year old girl, blood streaming from an eye wound, was screaming for her dead mother, while her father, shot in a leg, begged to be freed from the plastic wrist cuffs slapped on him by U.S. marines, so he could hug his other terrified daughter. (Reuters/Damir Sagolj) # Smoke billows from a building hit during coalition forces air raid in Baghdad, on Monday March 31, 2003.(AP Photo/Jerome Delay) # An Iraqi man comforts his 4-year-old son at a regroupment center for POWs of the 101st Airborne Division near An Najaf, Iraq in this March 31, 2003 photo. The man was seized in An Najaf with his son and the U.S. military did not want to separate father and son. (AP Photo/Jean-Marc Bouju) # The inside of the Sheraton Hotel, scene of alleged looting, in Basra, southern Iraq, on April 8, 2003.(Reuters/Simon Walker) # U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld speaks to the press at a Pentagon briefing in Washington, April 9, 2003. Rumsfeld praised the progress of American-led forces fighting in Iraq but warned the fighting would continue and the military still needed to account for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. (Reuters/Rick Wilking) # Kuwaiti firefighters secure a burning oil well in the Rumaila oilfields, on March 27, 2003, set ablaze by Iraqi military forces.(USMC/Mary Rose Xenikakis) # The charred remains of dead Iraqi soldiers lay outside a bus hit by a U.S. tank shell on a highway between Baghdad's international airport and the city center, on April 7, 2003. (Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach) # The damaged "Al Mansur", Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's private yacht, anchored in central Basra, on April 10, 2003.(Reuters/Simon Walker) # Six-year-old Tyler Jordan is hugged by his mother Amanda while U.S. Army Chaplain Captain David Nott looks on during the funeral of the boy's father, United States Marine Gunnery Sgt. Philip Jordan, at Holy Family Church in Enfield, Connecticut, on April 2, 2003. Sgt. Jordan was killed during fighting outside Nasiriyah on March 23 in the early days of the U.S. led invasion of Iraq. (Reuters/Chip East) # A U.S. Marine covers the face of a statue of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with a U.S. flag in Baghdad, on April 9, 2003. U.S. troops briefly draped an American flag over the face of a giant statue of Hussein, as they prepared to topple it in front of a crowd of Iraqis. (Reuters/Goran Tomasevic) # Iraqi Kurds wave banners and U.S. and British flags in the northern Iraqi town of Dohuk, on April 9, 2003, to celebrate the arrival of U.S. led coalition forces' in Baghdad. Iraqi Kurds shouted for joy and fired in the air on Wednesday after U.S. forces entered Baghdad. "It's all over in Baghdad," said 29-year-old Rafiq Baway, who heard the news on satellite TV in the city of Sulaimaniya. He believed it would lead to the fall of Kirkuk, the northern oil hub where Kurds accuse Saddam of expelling Kurdish inhabitants and replacing them with Arabs. (Reuters) # U.S. Marine helicopters patrol the skies over Baghdad, on April 13, 2003. (Reuters/Gleb Garanich) # President Bush gives a thumbs-up sign after declaring the end of major combat in Iraq as he speaks aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the California coast, on May 1, 2003. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) # Smoke from burning oil fires set ablaze by Iraqis as a shield against incoming missiles and air raids obscures Baghdad, on April 1, 2003. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay) |
April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein. [Source: Wilson's Almanac]The US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, goes to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry to meet with Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, to deliver a statement made earlier in the week by State Department spokesperson Margaret Tutwiler. The statement is equivocal about Iraq’s belligerent pose towards Kuwait (see 
The New York Times headline on March 8, 1992. [Source: Public domain]The Defense Planning Guidance, “a blueprint for the department’s spending priorities in the aftermath of the first Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union,” is leaked to the New York Times. [
Richard Perle. [Source: Public domain]The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, an Israeli think tank, publishes a paper titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” [
influential neoconservative academic and former Bush adviser Richard Perle, primarily responsible for the content of the paper; 
PNAC logo. [Source: Project for the New American Century]The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), an influential neoconservative think tank, publishes a letter to President Clinton urging war against Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein because he is a “hazard” to “a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil.” In a foretaste of what eventually happens, the letter calls for the US to go to war alone, attacks the United Nations, and says the US should not be “crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.” The letter is signed by many who will later lead the 2003 Iraq war. 10 of the 18 signatories later join the Bush Administration, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretaries of State Richard Armitage and Robert Zoellick, Undersecretaries of State John Bolton and Paula Dobriansky, presidential adviser for the Middle East Elliott Abrams, Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, and George W. Bush’s special Iraq envoy Zalmay Khalilzad. Other signatories include William Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Peter Rodman, William Schneider, Vin Weber, and James Woolsey. [
Mickey Herskowitz. [Source: Public domain]Presidential candidate George W. Bush tells prominent Texas author and Bush family friend Mickey Herskowitz, who is helping Bush write an autobiography, that as president he would invade Iraq if given the opportunity. “One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief,” Herskowitz remembers Bush saying. “My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of [Kuwait] and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade Iraq, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.” Herskowitz later says he believes Bush’s comments were intended to distinguish himself from his father, rather than express a desire to invade Iraq. [
Photo of the cover of the Desert Crossing after-action briefing. [Source: National Security Archives]The US Central Command, or CENTCOM (see 
Osama Siblani. [Source: Publicity photo]Presidential candidate George W. Bush allegedly tells Osama Siblani, publisher of an Arab American newspaper, that if he becomes president he will remove Saddam Hussein from power. “He told me that he was going to take him out,” Siblani says in a radio interview on Democracy Now! almost five years later. Siblani will also recall that Bush “wanted to go to Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, and he considered the regime an imminent and gathering threat against the United States.” As Siblani will later note, as a presidential candidate Bush has no access to classified intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs. [
People involved in the 2000 PNAC report (from top left): Vice President Cheney, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, Undersecretary of Defense Dov Zakheim, and author Eliot Cohen. [Source: Public domain]The neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century writes a “blueprint” for the “creation of a ‘global Pax Americana’” (see 
Clinton and Bush meeting in the White House on December 19, 2000. [Source: NBC]President Clinton and President-Elect Bush meet for their "exit interview," in a two-hour meeting. [
Laurie Mylroie. [Source: Publicity photo]US authorities re-open the files on Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the WTC bombing in 1993, and begin looking into the theory that Yousef may have actually been an Iraqi agent. Presumably this is in response to requests by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz the month before to look into the matter (see 
William Luti. [Source: Helene C. Stikkel / Defense Department]Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, both staunch neoconservatives, rename the Northern Gulf Affairs Office on the Pentagon’s fourth floor (in the seventh corridor of D Ring) the “Office of Special Plans” (OSP) and increase its four-person staff to sixteen. [
The Library Lounge of the St. Regis Hotel, where Libby and Miller discussed the Wilsons. [Source: Starwood Hotels]Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, meets with New York Times reporter Judith Miller for breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, DC. Libby has already learned that Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, is an undercover CIA agent (see 
Peter Zeidenberg (left) and Patrick Fitzgerald outside the courthouse during the Libby trial. [Source: Reuters / Jonathan Ernst]After some final sparring between opposing counsel, the prosecution makes its closing argument in the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction trial. Assistant prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg opens with a lengthy presentation summing up the prosecution’s case against Libby. [
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Sgt. 1st Class Justin Hathaway braves a sandstorm after leaving the 9th Air and Space Expeditionary Task Force-Iraq and U.S. Forces-Iraq Provost Marshal Office at Al Asad Air Base, Iraq, on September 27, 2011. (Master Sgt. Cecilio Ricardo/USAF)
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