September – October 2002.  The open push for war in Iraq is launched in full force, with top administration figures and their media echoes synchronized on the drive to war. Needless to say, they use the first anniversary of 9/11 to do so. Also, in October 2002, for three weeks the Washington, D.C., area is consumed by apparently random sniper shootings. Ten people are killed and three others receive critical injuries in the incidents, which occur over a broad span of the area from Virginia to Baltimore, Maryland. The DC media continue to be saturated ...   more »

August is notoriously the traditional if unofficial month away for movers and shakers in Washington, D.C., including most prominent individuals in the news media. In August 2002 the campaign to get war with Iraq rolling continues, with the noise machine ramping up in support of the White House both inside and outside major news outlets.
August 15-31, 2002:

 
Aug. 15, 2002 – The personnel who gave the much questioned August 8 briefing in Doug Feith’s office again give the same briefing, about a supposed relationship between the Iraq regime and al-Qaeda, to Director of ...   more »

Continuing the blog series on the administration push to Iraq. In August, 2002, the partly stealth, partly hype campaign is launched in deadly earnest. By this time, the White House has marshaled all the necessary think-tank support and has enlisted every significant element of the rightwing echo machine.
August 1-14, 2002:

Aug. 1, 2002 – The CIA publishes a paper titled ‘Iraq’s Reemerging Nuclear Program.’ The paper does not mention the Niger uranium story.

Aug. 5, 2002 – U.S. and U.K. forces destroy an air defense base in southwest Iraq, near the Saudi ...   more »

 
First, a short sampling of those who say that Bhutto was killed by a gunman:

1. Getty Images photographer John Moore, present at the scene, narrates that he “heard three shots go off,” and saw Bhutto go down through the sunroof of her car. Audio here.

The blast of the explosion followed....   more »

40th in continuing blog series on the administration campaign to invade Iraq. Summer, 2002, plans continue behind the scenes, with the public mostly not included. The planning intensifies, leading into August.

Late July, 2002:

July 20, 2002 – ABCNews.com reports that as much as 90 percent of Iraq’s actual oil exports are going to U.S. Gulf Coast refiners:

“Oil industry sources tell ABC News that the U.S. companies most heavily involved at present are Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Bayoil and Koch Petroleum, which use it in their refineries in Louisiana and Texas.

          The U.S. refiners ...   more »

In July, administration war plans proceed behind the scenes. Warnings of terrorist strikes over the July of Fourth holiday abound but are unfulfilled, with the possible exception of the Egyptian-born gunman who opens fire at the El Al Airlines desk at LAX.
July 1-10, 2002:

July 1, 2002 – A U.S. bombing of a wedding party in Afghanistan kills 130 Afghan civilians, according to Afghani authorities, or 40 Afghanis, according to U.S. officials. According to the U.S. officials, a large group of wedding guests was standing near an anti-artillery aircraft site. The wedding party was fired upon ...   more »

Summer 2002, continued.          In June 2002, “Operation Southern Focus” begins, with U.S. aircraft dropping over 600 bombs on Iraqi air defenses up until the beginning of the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. While stating publicly that the US is enforcing the “no-fly” zone over southern Iraq, the sorties actually carry out offensive strikes against both civilian and military targets in Iraq, damaging or destroying Iraqi defenses well before the invasion. Reportedly the US flies more than 21,000 sorties over southern Iraq between June 2002 and the start of the invasion in March 2003, reinforced by British ...   more »

When the Soviet Union pulled out of Afghanistan, it left Afghani roads, villages and fields sown with tens of thousands of land mines. According to the international Landmine Monitor Report for 2006,

 
“Afghanistan emerged from more than two decades of conflict, starting in the 1970s, as one of the countries most contaminated by landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERW). Security forces have continued to discover huge quantities of abandoned explosive ordnance (AXO) and unexploded ordnance (UXO).^[28] The Landmine Impact Survey, which completed fieldwork in January 2005, reported 2,245 casualties in the two years before the ...   more »