This is a repost. I've been asked repeatedly to post it again. If I'm not supposed to and an administrator wants me to delete it I will.
Dick Cheney recently decided to link Iraq/9-11/WMDs. I decided that this couldn't go unchallenged. So my friend Michael (who is amazing) and I incorporated timelines from the Plame outing, Iraq WMD lies, torture and 9/11 to make one enormous, exhaustive timeline.
I noticed a lot of interesting things that were closer together than I originally expected and the timeline brings up a lot of new questions. Hopefully it will be useful.
I edited some things I realized were incorrect so let me know if I missed anything. This really helps put in perspective how the lies were designed and coincided with torture to link al Qaeda and Iraq.
You can add things in the comments if you want.
May 17, 2000 - Bush said he was going to "take out" Saddam Hussein in Iraq.(.)
January 2, 2001 - Niger embassy in Rome burglarized. Letterhead of Niger government stolen.(.)
January 30, 2001 - First Bush national security meeting, he asked about invading Iraq.
April 2001 - Czech sources say that Mohammed Atta went to Prague and met with Iraqi official on this date, it was later discovered to be untrue, though Cheney used it as evidence for years.
June or July 2001 - A team of CIA agents, including Valerie Plame Wilson, and Jordanian secret police intercept a shipment of aluminum tubes in Jordan destined for Iraq. (WaPo; Isikoff & Corn, Hubris) WaPo; Isikoff & Corn, Hubris
August 6, 2001: Bush receives PDB titled "Bin Laden Determined to strike US."
September 11, 2001 - Al Qaeda attacks US.
Sept. 12, 2001 - Bush asked Richard Clarke to link Saddam to 9/11, Clarke protested, Bush got mad.
September 12 - Bush was talking about "getting Iraq."
Sometime after 9/11 -
"...when Tenet insisted in his personal meetings with the president that there was no connection between al Qaeda and Iraq, Cheney and Rumsfeld initiated a secret program to re-examine the evidence and marginalize the agency and Tenet."
(.)
September 14 - A congressional resolution authorizes U.S. President George W. Bush to use "all necessary and appropriate force" to combat the countries and groups behind 9/11. Vice President Dick Cheney promises that the United States will use "any means at our disposal" to combat terrorism.
September 16 - In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, Cheney says the government will need to work through "the dark side." He continues:
"We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion. ...It's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal."
September 20 - British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrives in Washington; he is alarmed that Bush wants to "get Iraq."
September 25 - Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) lawyer John Yoo submits a memo to the White House advising that Bush may preemptively wage war anywhere in the world, against any country or organization that harbors or supports any terrorist group, linked to the 9/11 attacks or not.
September/October 2001 -
"The events of 11 September 2001 changed everything, not least of which was the administration's outlook concerning strategic influence," notes one Army report. " Faced with direct evidence that many people around the world actively hated the United States, Bush began taking action to more effectively explain U.S. policy overseas. Initially the White House and DoD turned to the Rendon Group."
October 2001 - Pentagon hires John Rendon to target Iraq with propaganda; he gives $16 million contract to them.
Three weeks after the September 11th attacks, according to documents obtained from defense sources, the Pentagon awarded a large contract to the Rendon Group.
October 15, 2001 - Reporting on a Niger/Iraq yellowcake agreement first comes to the attention of U.S. Intelligence. The Italian intelligence agency, SISMI, provides the CIA with a report on a 1999 trip to Niger made by Wissam al-Zahawie (see February 1999), Iraq's former ambassador to the Vatican. The report suggests that the trip's mission was to discuss the future purchase of uranium oxide. According to sources later interviewed by New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, the report is "dismissed as amateurish and unsubstantiated" by US intelligence.(.)
Late October 2001 - The CIA briefs Vice President Dick Cheney on intelligence that was provided by the Italians suggesting that Iraq is attempting to purchase uranium from Niger. Cheney asks about the implications of the report and is reportedly dissatisfied with the initial response. He asks the agency to take another look.
October 2001 - The secret targeting of foreign journalists may have had a sinister purpose. Among the missions proposed for the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence was one to "coerce" foreign journalists and plant false information overseas. Secret briefing papers also said the office should find ways to "punish" those who convey the "wrong message." One senior officer told CNN that the plan would "formalize government deception, dishonesty and misinformation."
November 2001 - Bush asks Cheney for Iraq War plan. (Source: Bob Woodward's book, Plan of Attack.)
November 13 - Bush issues an executive order declaring that the United States will try any foreigners who commit acts of terrorism or harbor terrorists via military commission, under rules written by the executive branch.
November 27 - Howard Fineman:
"He wants to avoid the more profound mistakes his dad made...: his failure, at the end of the Gulf War, to stop -- once and for all -- Saddam Hussein in Iraq from threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction."
November 27 - Tommy Franks: "...the president wants us to look at options for Iraq" (Source: his memoirs).
December - The Department of Defense general counsel's office solicits information on detainee "exploitation" from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), which advises on counterinterrogation techniques known as SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape).
December 9 - Dick Cheney:
"Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that -- it's been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack. Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don't know at this point, but that's clearly an avenue that we want to pursue."
(Meet the Press)
December 17, 2001 - al Haideri falsely claims Iraq has WMD program.
December 20th - Judith Miller front-page story hits the stands; it is exactly the kind of exposure Rendon had been hired to provide. "AN IRAQI DEFECTOR TELLS OF WORK ON AT LEAST 20 HIDDEN WEAPONS SITES."
The INC's choice for the worldwide print exclusive was equally easy: Chalabi contacted Judith Miller of The New York Times. Miller, who was close to I. Lewis Libby and other neoconservatives in the Bush administration, had been a trusted outlet for the INC's anti-Saddam propaganda for years.
December 21 - "Saddam has to go", Bush's National Security team said. (Source: Newsweek)
Late 2001 - The Italian government reportedly obtains half a dozen letters and other documents from a source in Rome alleged to be correspondence between Niger and Iraqi officials negotiating a sale of 500 tons of uranium oxide. The Italians share the intelligence with their counterparts in both Britain and the US.
Martino receives a telephone call sometime in late 2001 from a former colleague at SISMI, who informs him that his source at the Nigerien embassy is in possession of documents that might be of interest to him. "I met her and she gave me documents," Martino later tells the Sunday Times. "SISMI wanted me to pass on the documents but they didn't want anyone to know they had been involved."
These documents consisting of a series of letters purported to have been exchanged between the Niger government and an Iraqi diplomat to Martino. According to these letters, Iraq had attempted to obtain 500 tons of uranium oxide, or "yellowcake," from Niger.
January 2002 - Niger-Iraq yellowcake connection first investigated (Wilson, Politics of Truth, p. 452).
February 2002 - The New York Times reports that the Pentagon hired Rendon "to help the new office," a charge Rendon denies. "We had nothing to do with that," he says.
February 2002 - Cheney gets report questioning al Libi confession and Niger uranium.
February 5, 2002 - Italian intelligence agency, SISMI, shares a second report on Nigerien uranium. The CIA Directorate of Operations reports on this (intelligence memo; WaPo).
February 7 - Bush issues an executive order denying Taliban and al Qaeda detainees the protections afforded under the Geneva Conventions, saying that the United States needs "new thinking in the law of war." Article 3 of the conventions prohibits "cruel treatment and torture" and the "humiliating and degrading treatment" of detainees.
February 12, 2002 - Based on information from the Feb. 5 CIA report, the DIA publishes a finished intelligence product on Niger uranium. (SSCI, p. 50)
Someone in the Office of the Vice President calls a junior CIA officer asking about the Iraq-Niger allegations. The officer talks to Valerie Wilson about the call. A third officer joins the conversation. Wilson and the third officer go to Wilson's branch supervisor. At the branch supervisor's urging, Wilson writes to the chief of the Counterproliferation Division that "my husband has good relations with both the PM and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity."
(V. Wilson memo, at p. 3; SSCI; V. Wilson hearing testimony, at Rep. Lynch questioning)(.)
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February 12 -
The 2002 mission grew out of a request by Vice President Cheney on Feb. 12 for more information about a Defense Intelligence Agency report he had received that day, according to a 2004 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. An aide to Cheney would later say he did not realize at the time that this request would generate such a trip.
(.)
(.)
(.) - (Senator Levin on the report)
February 13 2002 - Vice President Dick Cheney has seen the Feb. 12 DIA report, that Iraq is purchasing uranium from Africa. He tasks CIA briefer David Terry to look into the issue. (CIA task sheet; SSCI, p. 50)
(.)
February 14 - Cheney told in another report and memo that the information about al Libi's tortured confession as well as the Iraq/Niger information is bad.
Feb. 19, 2002 - Tommy Franks tells Senator Bob Graham that military and intelligence are no longer engaged in Afghanistan, now focused on Iraq. (Source: Graham's memoirs.)
February 20, 2002 - Wilson accepts mission to Niger.
February 26 - Wilson arrives in Niger, finds no evidence that they sold uranium to Iraq.
March 13, 2002 - Bush - "I'm truly not concerned about (bin Laden.)"
March 24 - Dick Cheney appears on three talk shows and states that Saddam is pursuing nuclear weapons. (CNN transcript; Meet the Press transcript)
March 28 - The CIA and Pakistani intelligence service capture a top al Qaeda operative, Abu Zubayda. Zubayda is shot multiple times while attempting to evade capture.
Spring - Cheney had already made up his mind about invading Iraq. (.)
April - A document on SERE techniques is circulated to JPRA and Department of Defense staffers.
April - Tony Blair tells Bush to seek UN approval for Iraq War.
April-May - al Libi is tortured.
May - The CIA asks senior White House officials, including National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, to consider the possibility of using rough interrogation tactics, such as waterboarding, in interrogations.
May 8 - José Padilla, who allegedly planned a "dirty bomb" attack, is arrested in Chicago; he is currently serving a 17-year sentence in a supermax prison. He and two other combatants were held incommunicado in a Navy brig for years following their detention.
July - Richard Shiffrin, a counsel in the Department of Defense, inquires about SERE techniques -- initially designed to help U.S. soldiers captured abroad. Members of the CIA learn SERE techniques in September.
July 17 - Rice meets with CIA Director George Tenet. She says the CIA may go ahead with its planned interrogation of Zubayda, if the Justice Department signs off.
July 23, 2002 - Downing Street memo written, fixing facts around policy.
July 26 - Attorney General John Ashcroft concludes that waterboarding is lawful, allowing the CIA to go ahead and use the technique on Zubayda.
August 1 - Jay Bybee, then head of the OLC and now a federal judge, sends a memo to John Rizzo, counsel to the CIA, about torture and Zubayda. He says 10 escalating techniques, leading up to waterboarding, do not constitute torture and may be used.
August 1 - In another memo to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, largely written by Yoo and commonly called the "Bybee Memo," the OLC concludes that only acts which result in pain equivalent to "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death," constitute torture; all lesser abuse is legal. Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh called it "perhaps the most clearly erroneous legal opinion I have ever read."
August - Zubayda is waterboarded more than 80 times over the course of the month.
August 7, 2002 - Just weeks after the Dearlove visit to Washington, Cheney says in California that no decision has been made on Iraq.
August 26, 2002 - Bush meets with Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan, CNN reports that White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the press, "The president stressed that he has made no decisions (on Iraq), that he will continue to engage in consultations with Saudi Arabia and other nations about steps in the Middle East, steps in Iraq."
(.)
September 8 - Cheney says no decision has been made on Iraq.
September 8 - Judith Miller writes lies about WMDs.
September 10, 2002 - al Libi and Zubaydah said to offer "valuable information" but they didn't really.(.)
September 12, 2002 - Report titled "Iraq: Denial and Deception" gets put on White House website,falsely linking Iraq/WMD/9-11.
September 25 - David Addington, counsel to Cheney, and other high-ranking administration lawyers travel to Guantánamo to review procedures and conditions.
October 1, 2002 - The classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq WMD programs is produced. (.)
October 6, 2002 - Bush "mushroom cloud" speech.
October 7, 2002 - Bush's "Denial and Deception" speech linking Iraq/9-11/WMD (October 7: Bush gives a speech making the case for the link between al Qaeda and Iraq.
"We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases," he says. The information was false, given by a detainee under intense interrogation.)
(NIE, declassified but largely redacted, as released June 1, 2004; NIE key judgements, declassified, as released July 18, 2003).
Denial and Deception released to public, linking Iraq WMDs. (.)
November - In the "Salt Pit," a secret, CIA-run prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, guards strip a detainee, chain him outdoors, and leave him there. He dies of hypothermia.
December 2 - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approves coercive interrogation techniques, including "inducing stress by use of detainee's fears (e.g. dogs)," for Guantánamo. He jots on a memo, "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?"
Late 2002 - "I'm aware of the fact that in late 2002, early 2003, that (the alleged al Qaida-Iraq link) was an interest on the intelligence side.... That was something they were tasked to look at."(.)
He said he was unaware of the origins of the directive, but a former senior U.S. intelligence official has told McClatchy that Cheney's and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's offices were demanding that information in 2002 and 2003. The official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter, requested anonymity.
December 17 - Press Secretary Ari Fleischer says no decision to invade Iraq has been made.
January 2003 - More than a year after her first article appeared, Miller again reported that Pentagon "intelligence officials" were telling her that "some of the most valuable information has come from Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri."
January 28, 2003 - The 16 words are spoken by the President in the State of the Union address.
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
February 5, 2003 - Secretary of State Colin Powell addresses the UN to make the case about WMDs and Saddam Hussein. Powell does not mention the Niger allegations.
March 1 - U.S. and Pakistani forces capture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a top al Qaeda operative.
March - U.S. interrogators waterboard Mohammed 183 times over the course of the month.
(The New York Times said on 5/4/09 that waterboarding was stopped in 2003... CIA was worried about legality, even though the administration says this is vital to American survival. So of course it was important enough to just quit.)
March 1, 2003 - Afghanistan torture and murder...
Nevertheless, I was able to review an internal memorandum from UNAMA officials who visited the detainees days after they were transferred from the American compound into the custody of local police. The memo records the detainees saying that they had been regularly beaten by U.S. interrogators, and that some had been subjected to torture, including electric shocks and immersion in cold water. I also obtained copies of all the testimony given by the detainees to Afghan military prosecutors two months after the Americans transferred them to police custody. Together, these documents detail systematic and grave abuse of the prisoners during the 17 days of their captivity.
March 9 - The decision to produce a workup on Wilson in order to discredit him is made, at a meeting within the Office of the Vice President (Wilson, Politics of Truth; eriposte; USA Today; RawStory). (.)
(.)
(.)
March 14 - Yoo sends William Haynes, counsel to the Department of Defense, a memo working through the applicability of international and national law to detainee treatment. It cites the prerogative of national "self-defense" and the executive power of the president as paramount.
March 16 - Vice President Dick Cheney appears on Meet the Press. He denies ElBaradei's assertion that the Niger documents were forgeries.
March 30 - Rumsfeld says "We know where the WMDs are." (.)
May 2003 - Pentagon-commissioned team concluded that trailers did not produce WMD
May 1, 2003 - Mission Accomplished day. Codpiece, flight suit.
May 9, 2003 -
Paul Wolfowitz: We agreed on WMD rationale for bureaucratic reasons
"The truth is that, for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason [to go to war]." [Wolfowitz]
May 29 - Bush says we found the WMDs.
June 6 - The 9/11 Commission requests interrogation documents and logs from the Department of Defense, FBI, and CIA, including all material relating to Zubayda. The CIA supplies written summaries, rather than original documents.
June 8 - National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice appears on Meet the Press and This Week on ABC and attempts to refute Kristof's claims in his early May article (about WMDs).
June 23, 3:00 p.m. - Second known outing to reporters: Libby tells Miller. New York Times reporter Judith Miller meets with Scooter Libby in Libby's office.
June 26, 2003 - Bush gives statement marking day in support of victims of torture, CIA panics, asks if they should stop torturing. (NYT)
April 10 - Press Secretary Ari Fleischer: WMDs are not what the war is about.
July 5 - A senior administration official tells Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus that Joseph Wilson's mission to Africa originated within the CIA's clandestine service after Vice President Dick Cheney aides raised questions during a briefing. "It was not orchestrated by the vice president," the official says. Also according to the official, the trip was reported in a routine way, and the report did not mention Wilson's name and did not say anything about forgeries.(WaPo)
July 6 - What I Didn't Find in Africa is published
July 7, 8:45 a.m. - At the senior staff meeting, Karl Rove states the need to get the message out about Wilson, that the Vice President had not sent him. (Libby testimony, p. 88-89]
July 7, 9:34 a.m. - Ari Fleischer says at the press gaggle that the Vice President had not requested Wilson's trip, had not been aware of it, and had not seen the results.
July 7 - Dick Cheney directs Catherine Martin to keep track of press and television coverage of Wilson, and to report it to himself and Libby.
July 11 - Karl Rove tells Time magazine's Matthew Cooper "don't get too far out on Wilson" because information is going to be declassified soon that will cast doubt on Wilson's mission and findings. Cooper also wrote that Rove told him that Wilson's wife worked for the agency on weapons of mass destruction and that "she was responsible for sending Wilson."
July 14 - Novak column outing Plame as a CIA agent is published.
July 17 - Cooper, Time, War on Wilson is published.
July 18 - The administration starts declassifying stuff.
A declassified version of the key judgments section of the NIE is released. (White House briefing, Newsweek)
September 14 - Vice President Dick Cheney is interviewed on Meet the Press. He says "I don’t who [sic] sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back."
October 4 - Damage caused by leak includes more CIA operations, Iran, Iraq, etc.
October 9 - The Red Cross -- the only independent organization afforded access to the Guantánamo detainees -- issues a public statement about the "deterioration in the psychological health of a large number of detainees" there.
October 15 - The New York Times reports that senior criminal prosecutors and FBI officials criticized the Attorney General's failure to recuse himself or appoint a special counsel. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that whether the Attorney General should step aside has been discussed in the department and by his own senior advisors. They "fear Mr. Ashcroft could be damaged by continuing accusations that as an attorney general with a long career in Republican partisan politics, he could not credibly lead a criminal investigation that centered on the aides to a Republican president." (Johnston and Lichtblau, "Senior Federal Prosecutors and FBI Officials Fault Ashcroft Over Leak Inquiry," New York Times, October 16, 2003)
White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales claims that Congressional suggestions about how to handle the leak are unconstitutional: "We believe it is inconsistent with the constitution's separation-of-powers principles for members of Congress to direct the president's management of White House employees..." (Reuters, Oct. 15, 2003)
November 4, 2003 - A detainee at Abu Ghraib Prison, captured by Navy Seal Team number seven, dies during an interrogation by Navy Seals and "OGA." A previously released autopsy report, that appears to be of Manadel Al Jamadi, shows that the cause of his death was "blunt force injury complicated by compromised respiration." New documents specifically record the circumstances of death as "Q by OGA and NSWT died during interrogation."(.)
November 26, 2003 - A detainee is smothered to death during an interrogation by Military Intelligence, in Al Qaim, Iraq. A previously released autopsy report, that appears to be of General Mowhoush, lists "asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression" as the cause of death and cites bruises from the impact with a blunt object. New documents specifically record the circumstances of death as "Q by MI, died during interrogation." (ACLU)
Early 2004 -
More than two years after he made the dramatic allegations to Miller and Moran about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, al-Haideri is taken back to Iraq by the CIA's Iraq Survey Group. On a wide-ranging trip through Baghdad and other key locations, al-Haideri is given the opportunity to point out exactly where Saddam's stockpiles were hidden, confirming the charges that had helped to start a war.
In the end, he cannot identify a single site where illegal weapons were buried.
January 16, 2004 - Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld informed of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. At least 51 detainees have died in U.S. custody since that date.
January 28, 2004 - Iraq Survey Group inspector David Kay reports:
"It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing." [Kay, 1/28/04]
March 24, 2004 - Bush jokes at the Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere."
Published in April 2004 - "A CIA officer named Mark Swanner and an interpreter led the team that interrogated al-Jamadi. Nine Navy personnel were also implicated. An autopsy conducted by the U.S. military five days after al-Jamadi’s death found that the cause: "blunt force injuries complicated by compromised respiration."
April 19, 2004 - Bob Woodward reveals CIA Director George Tenet said there was a "slam dunk case" against Iraq
"About two weeks before deciding to invade Iraq, President Bush was told by CIA Director George Tenet there was a ‘slam dunk case; that dictator Saddam Hussein had unconventional weapons, according to a new book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward."
[CNN, 4/19/04]
April 28 - Abu Ghraib torture images revealed
April 28 through May 10 - The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh and CBS News break the story of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
May 5, 2004 - Appearing on Arab TV, Bush expresses sorrow over prisoner abuse
"The American people are just as appalled at what they have seen on TV as Iraqi citizens have. The Iraqi citizens must understand that." [NYT, 5/5/04]
May 7, 2004 - CIA inspector general John L. Helgerson completed report, interrogations not legal, rules being broken, torture is not effective.(.)
May 7, 2004 - Rumsfeld testifies before senate armed services committee, wished he had known about torture, it's a few bad apples, he's sorry, the troops will be punished.(.)
May 2004 - By now, torture policy is already widespread, from the CIA to the military.
June 8 - The Washington Post's Dana Priest and Jeffrey Smith break the story of the OLC torture memos.
June 17, 2004 - "The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no ‘collaborative relationship’ between Iraq and al Qaeda, challenging one of the Bush administration's main justifications for the war in Iraq."(.)
June 28 - In Rasul v. Bush and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court rules that Guantánamo Bay detainees have the legal right to challenge their detention.
July 2004 - Report on false intelligence. (.)
October 7, 2004 - Duelfer Report: Iraq did not have WMD
"Saddam Hussein did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003 and had not begun any program to produce them, a CIA report concludes." [CNN, 10/7/04]
December 8, 2004 - Donald Rumsfeld: 'You go to war with the Army you have'... Troops were lacking needed equipment to shield from IEDs.(.)
"As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time." [Rumsfeld, 12/8/04]
January 12, 2005 - WMD search in Iraq is declared over.
March 17, 2005 - Porter Goss at CIA says we do not torture and it does not work.(.)
March 31, 2005 - Silberman-Robb commission, the presidential commission on Iraqi WMD, concludes: "[T]he intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments."
May 2005 - Downing Street memo leaked.
May 10 - Steven Bradbury of the OLC authors a detailed, 46-page memo to John Rizzo, the CIA counsel, authorizing a variety of coercive interrogation techniques and arguing that even the harshest techniques are not torture. He writes, "As you have informed us, the CIA has previously used the waterboard repeatedly on two detainees, and, as far as can be determined, these detainees did not experience physical pain or, in the professional judgment of doctors, is there any medical reason to believe they would have done so." A second, shorter memo describes the detention process and again stresses that nothing being done is torture, and therefore is legal.
August 29, 2005 - Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans.
September 9, 2005 - Colin Powell, on his pre-war speech to the UN: it's a blot on my record.
November 2 - In the Washington Post, investigative reporter Dana Priest describes the black site prisons. Sometime this month, the CIA destroys videotapes of the interrogations of high-value detainees.
December - Congress passes the Detainee Treatment Act, which outlaws "cruel, inhumane, or degrading" treatment of U.S.-held prisoners anywhere in the world. Members of Congress are unaware of OLC memos categorizing harsh techniques, including waterboarding, as legal.
April 12, 2006 - Washington Post reports that Pentagon-commissioned team had concluded in May 2003 that trailers did not produce WMD.
November 9, 2005 - Porter Goss again says we don't torture and it doesn't work.(.)
November 14, 2005 - Jane Mayer writes about detainee murder-torture (.)
June 2006 - Hamdan v. Rumsfeld SCOTUS decision says detainees should receive Geneva Conventions treatment.
August through September 2006 - Bradbury and Cheney try to restart torture program.(.)
August 21, 2006 - Bush acknowledges Iraq had "nothing" to do with 9/11. [Fox News, 8/21/2006]
September 11, 2006 - Cheney: war critics aid terrorists.
CHENEY: Terrorists are encouraged, obviously, when they see the kind of debate that we’ve had in the United States, suggestions, for example, that we should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. [Meet the Press, 9/11/2006]
Summer 2006 - Cheney and Gonzales argue in support of releasing prisoners from CIA black sites without ever mentioning they were there, sending them to Gitmo.
October 24 - In an interview for a radio program, Cheney says waterboarding's a "no-brainer."
"I think the terrorist threat, for example, with respect to our ability to interrogate high-value detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, [waterboarding]'s been a very important tool that we've had to be able to secure the nation," he says. "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed provided us with enormously valuable information about how many there are, about how they plan, what their training processes are and so forth; we've learned a lot. We need to be able to continue that."
November 3, 2006 - "Rumsfeld must go." A group of military publications — the Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times, and Marine Corps Times — call on Rumsfeld to resign.
December - Military Commissions Act passed, Porter Goss at CIA says no harsh interrogations without DoJ approval.
January 10, 2007 - New troops in Iraq lack needed armor.
"The thousands of troops that President Bush is expected to order to Iraq will join the fight largely without the protection of the latest armored vehicles that withstand bomb blasts far better than the Humvees in wide use, military officers said." [Baltimore Sun]
June 10 - Three Guantánamo detainees commit suicide.
October 18, 2007 - Mukasey says waterboarding, torture repugnant and over the line. (.)
2008 - CIA director Mueller, torture never stopped any plots.
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Some timelines from which I borrowed extensively:
(1)
(2)
(3)
Other sources:
(1)
(2)
Anything not sourced can either be found in one of the links in the timeline or one of these. Now it's your turn to add things.
Bloggers Against Torture