Iraq War Timeline
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This timeline documents the run-up to the war in Iraq and includes memos leaked to the British Press that shows Tony Blair's cabinet had concerns about  invading Iraq. Ask yourself, were we tricked into going to war?  
3/11/92
Paul Wolfowitz, then-under secretary of defense for policy, supervised the drafting of a 1992 policy statement on America's mission in the post-Cold War era. Called the "Defense Planning Guidance".  The 46-page classified document circulated for several weeks at senior levels in the Pentagon. But controversy erupted after it was leaked to The New York Times and The Washington Post and the White House ordered then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to rewrite it.  (PBS/Frontline)
 Sept. 2000 Rebuilding America's Defenses, a policy document published by DC think tank called Project for the New American Century (includes Cheney, Wolfowitz, Kristol, Perle, Bolton, "Scooter" Libby, Elliot Abrams). Included the "Wolfowitz Doctrine", increase defense spending by $100 billion including weapons in space. This "Pax Americana" would entail complete military and commercial control of land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. This would be accomplished by the waging of "multiple simultaneous large-scale wars" and the removal of Saddam Hussein. “The process of transformation,” the plan said, “is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor." (see Raw Story timeline below).
1/1/01 Paul O'Neill reveals that at Bush's first National Security Council meeting topic "A" was how to take out Saddam.  ("60 Minutes").
2/1/01 CIA Director George Tenet testifies in front of Congress that Iraq posed no threat to the U.S and its allies.
Sept. 11, 2001 World Trade Center and Pentagon Attacked
Sept. 11, 2001 Five hours after the Pentagon was hit, Rumsfeld wrote aids requesting "best info fast.  Judge whether good enough hit SH".
Sept. 12, 2001 Bush asks Richard Clarke, "Go back over everything, everything.  See if Saddam did this, if he is linked in any way." (Richard Clarkes'  Book, "Against All Enemies")
9/15/01 Rumsfeld sets up Office of Special Plans to create the rationale for the already planned attack on Iraq.  Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, worked in the Department of Defense and  witnessed how the DOD, Office of Special Plans, issued talking points about Iraq to Senior Government Officials to make sure they stayed on message concerning the WMD issue.  (Hijacking Catastrophe)
9/15/01 War Council at Camp David. Wolfowitz says now is the perfect time to move against state-sponsored terrorists, including Iraq.  Powell tells the president that an international coalition would only come together for an attack on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, not an invasion of Iraq. The war council votes with Powell. Rumsfeld abstains. The president decides that the war's first phase will be Afghanistan. Iraq will be reconsidered later. (PBS)
1/29/02 State of the Union Axis of Evil Speech
3/1/02 "F____ Saddam, we're taking him out."  President Bush said to Condoleeza Rice and 3 U.S. Senators, discussing how to deal with Iraq through the United Nations. (Time Magazine)
March 12 and 13, 2002 Sir David Manning meets with Condoleeza Rice. Says Blair will support but has to manage press, parliament and public opinion that was different than in the United States. (see afterdowningstreet.com below ) 
3/17/02 Sir Christopher Meyer, British ambassador to the US, meets with Paul Wolfowitz.  The next day he reports to Manning, "On Iraq, stuck very close to script that you used with Condi Rice last week.  Backed regime change…  Would be a tough sell for us domestically and tougher in Europe.  ...there had to be a strategy...(see afterdowningstreet.com below)
Undated memo, about 3/17/2002 British Documents detail that the British Government considering regime change in Iraq along with considerations to be addressed in supporting Bush objectives.  A legal justification is a necessary but far from sufficient precondition for military action.  "We have also to answer the big question - what will this action achieve?" (see afterdowningstreet.com below)
3/1/02 The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.  ( see afterdowningstreet.com below)
5/2002 The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.  (London Sunday Times, May 29, 2005)
5/5/02 "Rumsfeld has been so determined to find a rationale for an attack that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to the terror attacks of Sept. 11. The intelligence agency repeatedly came back empty-handed. The best hope for Iraqi ties to the attack — a report that lead hijacker Mohamed Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence official in the Czech Republic — was discredited last week. (Time Mag., 5/5/02) 
7/23/02 Sir David Manning, Blair's Policy Advisor, "C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action at a summit in Crawford Texas.  Participants at a meeting of Blair's inner circle on July 23, 2002 said since regime change was illegal it was "necessary to create the conditions" which would make it legal.... (see afterdowningstreet.com below)
8/2/05 Powell reports trouble getting U.S allies on board for war with Iraq…Bush agrees to take the case to the UN and asks advisors to begin preparing speech.  (PBS)
9/8/02 Cheney tells a TV interviewer, “We do know, with absolute certainty, that [Saddam] is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon";
Condoleezza Rice said, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”—a formulation that was taken up by hawks in the Administration.  (New Yorker)
9/16/02
Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser, was put forward to speak publicly about the timing of the Iraq rollout. It was Rove who argued earlier this year that the war on terrorism should be part of Republicans' campaigns. Last week, White House political aides encouraged GOP candidates to emphasize national security. Also, Andrew H. Card Jr., Bush's chief of staff, said last week that the White House held back on promoting the Iraq policy in the summer because, "from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."     (Washington Post).
 
9/17/02 Bush's National Security Strategy asserts that the US will never again allow its military supremacy to be challenged and embraces unilateral preemptive military strikes (G.W. Bush, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nssall.html)
9/24/02 CIA Chief George Tenet briefs Senate Foreign Relations Committee on claims about aluminum tubes and Niger uranium.  Two days later Colin Powell before the same Committee cites the same information.
11/18/02 The UN Security Council unanimously approves resolution 1441 imposing tough new arms inspections on Iraq and requiring Iraq to declare all weapons of mass destruction and account for known chemical weapons material stockpiles on pain of "serious consequences."  Iraq accepts the terms of the resolution and UN inspectors return.  (Iraqwatch)
12/19/02 Washington, for the first time, publicly identified Niger as the alleged seller of the nuclear materials, in a State Department position paper that rhetorically asked, “Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?” 
1/23/03 President's State of the Union Address, "The British Government has learned that Saddam recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa……."  (CIA had warned the President not to use the quote in Public)
  Colin Powell is reportedly upset about the intelligence that he is supposed to use to represent the case for war before the UN.  At one point during the rehearsal, Powell tossed several pages in the air. "I'm not reading this," he declared. "This is bullshit." (US News & World Report June 9, 2003)
2/1/03
2/5/03 Colin Powell goes to UN to prove case for invading Iraq
2/8/03 Downing Street is plunged into acute international embarrassment after it emerged that large parts of the British government's latest dossier on Iraq - allegedly based on "intelligence material" - were taken from published academic articles, some of them several years old  ( The Guardian)
3/7/03 Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes. “The I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic,” ElBaradei said. (The New Yorker 3/31/03)
3/19/03 War begins
 
References: http://www.afterdowningstreet.com/
http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/muriel/path_of_war_timeline_613.htm
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908792.html    Info Please
http://www.afsc.org/iraq/guide/war-timeline.htm  American Friends Service Committee
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/teach/gulfguide/gwtimeline.html  PBS
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/page/0,12438,793802,00.html  Guardian Newspaper
http://www.mideastweb.org/iraqtimeline.htm  Mideast Web
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/themes/1992.html