17^th day of blog series chronicling the administration push to war with Iraq, from lead-up to cover-up.
Nov. 1-19, 2001: 

 

Nov. 1, 2001 – Bush issues Executive Order 13233, “Presidential Records Act Executive Order,” which revokes a previous Executive Order by President Ronald Reagan. The order gives a current president or a former president the power to withhold presidential records indefinitely:

 
“(a) At an appropriate time after the Archivist receives a request for access to Presidential records under section 2204(c)(1), the Archivist shall provide notice to the former President and the incumbent President ...   more »

Sixteenth in blog series chronicling the administration push to war on Iraq. October, 2001, continued.

 

The investigation of the anthrax mailings seems to be in full swing, but without genuine progress. Efforts in the administration and in large media outlets to tie the anthrax mailings to Iraq also continue at least intermittently. The bombardment of Afghanistan continues; Osama bin Laden and other major figures associated with 9/11 are for the most part not found.

October 15-31, 2001:

 

Oct. 16, 2001 – The Washington Post reports that U.S. strikes against Afghanistan are intensifying and that the Pentagon ...   more »

15th in blog series chronicling the administration push to war. October 1-15, 2001.


October - November 2001.  Further driving home the horror, tension and fear of 9/11, one week after the attacks, samples of anthrax begin to be mailed anonymously to several individuals in news media and in Congress. The anthrax mailings cause five deaths and seventeen people injured. The media are saturated with ‘anthrax’ for weeks on end, but in spite of the emphasis at the time – particularly in the media hubs of Washington, D.C., and New York City – the anthrax mailings remain unsolved ...   more »

Fourteenth in blog series chronicling the administration push to war against Iraq. September, 2001:

For a few short weeks, media and Intelligence Community and military personnel pursue the trail behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks relentlessly. Behind the scenes, however, the administration is putting its war plans together – not for shoring up the home defenses, but for invading the Middle East. Many companies already in the federal contract pipeline get their ducks in a row and line up for accelerated orders under ongoing contracts. Soon, the lid comes down, and investigation is displaced by the war project. Meanwhile, in ...   more »

Thirteenth in blog series chronicling the lead-up to the Iraq war. September 2001: The attacks of 9/11 occur and are promptly seized upon. Bush: “We’re at war.” Neocons: “a second Pearl Harbor.” Sept. 10, 2001 – A book titled Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War is released, co-authored by New York Times reporters William Broad, Stephen Engelberg, and Judith Miller (Simon & Schuster).    more »

Twelfth in blog series chronicling the administration push to Iraq. August, 2001: The news media continue to be consumed with the Chandra Levy-Gary Condit scandal. Enron’s difficulties periodically surface. Bush spends much of the month of August at his recently purchased ranch in Crawford, Texas. While on vacation, the president, along with unnamed administration sources, keeps up the rhetorical attacks on Iraq. Aug. 1, 2001 – Administration sources disclose to news outlets that Bush is said to be contemplating aggressive action against Iraq. Possibilities are said to include air strikes, in ‘retaliation’ for Saddam’s almost having shot down a U.S. military plane in Iraqi air space.   more »

Not to jump to conclusions, but so far San Francisco, which has some truly wonderful sites and things including its Asian Art Museum, is overwhelming, overcrowded, dirty, and polluted. The twisted evergreens like giant bonzai - if that's not an oxymoron like 'jumbo shrimp' - are wonderful. Come to think of it, so are the prawns, which actually are jumbo shrimp. But this is no longer the American city most like Kiev,  most like the gentler European cities.

Not much news there. Nothing that can't be fixed, of course, if only a few million people per year decline to travel ...   more »

Eleventh in series of blogs on the administration push to war.

 July: Geopolitics and domestic politics for the summer continue. U.S. companies continue to import Iraqi oil at the rate of 710,000 barrels per day in July 2001, for a total of 10.88 million barrels for the month, according to the Energy Information Administration as cited in International Petroleum Monthly, Sept. 2002. The heavy oil commerce with Iraq even draws attention in corporate media outlets, see below, but apparently does not call into question administration saber-rattling against Iraq. Meanwhile, the installation of PNAC signatories and other neocons in ...   more »

Tenth in a series of blogs chronicling the administration push for war with Iraq. Money for the Iraqi National Congress comes from a pot “under the rainbow,” the State Department says. Summer 2001. The administration appears to be in a holding pattern, with little direct action taken against Iraq during the first two months but the rhetorical foundation for a campaign against Iraq is prepared. Little action also is taken on domestic security, a negative that contributes to 9/11. The media are consumed by the pitiful case of Chandra Levy, a young woman intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons who disappeared on May 1 and who turned out to have had a relationship with Congressman Gary Condit (D-CA). The scandal   more »

Ninth in blog series chronicling the administration push for war with Iraq, from lead-up to cover-up. May 2001:

 
May 1, 2001 – Barry D. Watts becomes director of Program Analysis and Evaluation, Office of the Secretary of Defense. Watts, an Air Force veteran, comes to government from Northrop Grumman, where he has been since 1986. His published writing includes a book on the military uses of space.

Paula Dobriansky is sworn in as Under Secretary for Global Affairs, State Department.

 
May 4, 2001 -- The United States is voted off the United Nations’ Human Rights panel. ...   more »

Eighth in blog series chronicling the administration push for war with Iraq, from lead-up to cover-up. April 2001:

 

Apr. 2, 2001 – The Middle East Economic Survey (M.E.E.S.) reports that Iraq’s March oil sales have rebounded to their level before the surcharge:  "most, if not all, international oil companies (IOCs) have withdrawn their reservations about being secondary buyers of Iraqi crude oil.  There is now more volume going to Europe than in January and February when over 90% of the crude went to the US."

[MEES 44:14, 2 April 2001.
 

Iraq is ...   more »

Seventh in a series of chronological posts from the first days of the Bush administration through the aftermath of the Iraq war.

 
March – April – May 2001.   Throughout the spring of 2001, administration neo-consolidation and personnel appointments along the same lines continue, installing a phalanx of officials in sensitive security positions bent on war with Iraq. March 2001:

  

March 2, 2001 – Paul Wolfowitz, who supports ‘regime change’ in Iraq, is sworn in as Deputy Secretary of Defense.

 

March 2001 – Vice President Cheney’s energy task force, officially named the National Energy Policy ...   more »

A great speech for all Americans, from the mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah:

Reprinted from NationalExpositor.com:

"Salt Lake City Mayor: Draw Your Line In the Sand

Address by Mayor Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson on 14 November, 2007

"Today, as we come together once again in this great city, we raise our voices in unison to say to President Bush, to Vice President Cheney, to other members of the Bush Administration (past and present), to a majority of Congress, including Utah’s entire congressional delegation, and to much of the mainstream media: “You have failed us miserably and we ...   more »

Feb. 16, 2001 – Controversial Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi meets with Edward Walker, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East affairs, in Washington, D.C. Chalabi later says that he has been authorized to spend over $30 million in U.S. funds for operations mainly inside Iraq. The policy of supporting Iraqi resistance groups is intensely advocated by new SecDef Rumsfeld and his deputy Wolfowitz. Chalabi’s group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), received little money under Clinton via the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act.     

 

Same day -- On the same date as the Chalabi meeting, about 50 U.S. ...   more »

It was a long day spent with the Judiciary Committee, but the end result was that at almost 5:00 p.m. -- the Committee convened at 10:00 this morning -- the newest effort of the Senate Judiciary Committee to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 did manage to pass out of Committee.

Many amendments were offered over the course of the day, several of them reduplicative amendments proposed by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), and almost all of them to Title I of the bill, designated the "least problematic" title in the legislation. Needless to say, most of the amendments ...   more »

Fifth in series of posts on the chronology leading to Iraq from the beginning of the Bush administration:

 

February – March 2001.       THREE WEEKS INTO OFFICE, the new administration conducts military strikes against Iraq. Further personnel appointments strengthen the impression that government is being reorganized to rearrange information around policy, and policy around politics.

The appointments also further consolidate echelons of neoconservatives and the ‘Project for the New American Century’ and allied think-tank networks in sensitive government positions, in foreign affairs and security.

Feb 1 – Feb 15, 2001:

 

Feb. 1, 2001 – Principals including ...   more »

There is method to the White House madness of treating every legitimate function of government like abandonware. They're trying to drown the economy in the bathtub. The goal is simple: to aggrandize the overprivileged few, and multinational corporations, against the mass of the population. This has been the Bush-Cheney goal from the start, and every splashy ‘values’ struggle over abortion or stem cell research or religious language in public buildings, etc., has been largely smokescreen. Regardless of the efforts of a few headline-grabbing and well-funded televangelists, the real darkling plain here is the one on which administration policy makers, their ...   more »

Right around the same time as George W. Bush’s inauguration, the New York Times is granted an interview with unnamed officials in the brand-new administration. The topic is Iraq.

 

Those liberal media? They don’t seem to have been too stand-offish, with the Bush team.

 

Jan. 22, 2001 – The New York Times gets an interview with unnamed U.S. officials:

 

“Iraq has rebuilt a series of factories that the United States has long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons, according to senior government officials. The new intelligence estimate could confront President Bush with an early ...   more »

Third in a series of posts about the chronology of the Bush administration and its designs on the Middle East. Physical attacks on Iraq began on the day of Bush’s inauguration. 

January 2, 2001 through January 20, 2001 – Inauguration Day:

 

Jan. 2, 2001 – Italian police discover that the Rome embassy of Niger, a small African nation, has been burglarized. Embassy letterhead stationery and stamps with the official seal of Niger are among objects missing. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq_1182

 

The missing materials will subsequently seem connected to blatant forgeries documenting a new Niger-Iraq uranium deal that turns ...   more »

Good for Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Here is the text of the letter sent by McCain (R-Ariz.) and Graham (R-S.C.), to their credit, to newly sworn in Attorney General Michael Mukasey:

"We are pleased that the Senate voted to confirm you last night as Attorney General of the United States. As you take office, we strongly urge you to immediately receive briefings on the CIA interrogation program and to publicly declare that the technique known as “waterboarding” is illegal.

We appreciate your acknowledgement that waterboarding is “over the line” and “repugnant.” As we have previously noted, waterboarding, under ...   more »

From the earliest days, as documented below and in subsequent posts, the largest media outlets were almost universally acquiescent in, or oblivious to, administration policy. Dec 21, 2000 through Dec 31, 2000:

 

Dec. 21, 2000 – A report appears that Adel Jubeir, longtime first secretary at the Saudi Embassy to Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan in Washington, D.C., will return to Saudi Arabia after many years in Washington, to take a senior position in the court advising Crown Prince Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz. The move reflects accurately that Jubeir’s lengthy service on behalf of the ...   more »

This is the first of a series of blogs to appear over the coming year, daily or almost daily, chronicling the administration’s push against Iraq from the first. Regrettably, the material is ample to extend, day by day, through the rest of the present presidential term and quite possibly into the next. These daily or almost daily posts are intended to make it impossible for history to dispute that the policy makers were bent on invading the Middle East from the first. They will not be a complete chronological record of administration policy and tactics, but they will be completely representative.    more »

Rep. Dennis Kucinich's resolution on impeachment has been sent to the House Judiciary Committee. Yesterday Kucinich sent the following letter to Rep. Conyers (D-Mich.), Chairman of the committee:

"November 9, 2007

The Honorable John Conyers, Jr.
Chairman
Committee on the Judiciary
2138 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC   20515

Dear Chairman Conyers

I am writing in support of H. Res. 799, the Articles of Impeachment which were referred to the committee relative to the Impeachment of the Vice President of the United States of America.

Recent reports indicate that the Vice President is attempting to shape the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran ...   more »