Iraq War 2003 Timeline

2001

• 11 January 2001 - George Bush goes to the Pentagon for 'a top-secret session with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to review hot spots around the world'. Attended by Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice, 'half of the 75-minute meeting focused on a discussion about Iraq and the Persian Gulf' according to one attendee.
• 30 January 2001 - "From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go." Saddam's removal is the first item of Bush's inaugural national security meeting. Then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill later tells journalist Ron Suskind, "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying, 'Go find me a way to do this.'" Bush also says the emphasis on Iraq will accompany a de-emphasis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Secretary of State Colin Powell says US disengagement would give Ariel Sharon free rein and bring further suffering upon the Palestinians. According to Suskind's later book, "The One Percent Doctrine," Bush replies, "Sometimes a show of force by one side can really clarify things."
• 14 February 2001 - Exxon vice president James Rouse meets Dick Cheney's task force on energy policy.
• 16 February 2001 - US-UK jets bomb Iraq.
• 14 February 2001 - Colin Powell, on a visit to Egypt, says that Saddam Hussein "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."
• 05 March 2001 - A Pentagon document dated March 5, 2001 and titled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" includes a map of areas for potential exploration. It is brought to light by Ron Suskind in his book "The Price of Loyalty." "It talks about contractors around the world from, you know, 30-40 countries," Suskind will tell CBS. "And which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq."
• 09 April 2001 - Mohammad Atta allegedly meets with senior Iraqi intelligence officials at the Iraqi embassy in Prague. The 9/11 Report (Section 7) will later debunk this claim: "The FBI has gathered evidence indicating that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 4 (as evidenced by a bank surveillance camera photo), and in Coral Springs, Florida, on April 11, where he…leased an apartment. On April 6, 9, 10, and 11, Atta's cellular telephone was used numerous times to call various lodging establishments in Florida from cell sites within Florida… No evidence has been found that Atta was in the Czech Republic in April 2001." Dick Cheney will nevertheless repeatedly invoke the meeting as evidence of a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam.
• 30 April 2001 - According to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies," Paul Wolfowitz challenges Clarke at a meeting: "You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack in New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages doesn't mean that they don't exist."
• 10 July 2001 - On or around this date National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is briefed by CIA director George Tenet and counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black about terror threats. Bob Woodward, in his book "State of Denial," reports that Tenet and Black decided they had to request a dramatic, "out-of-cycle" meeting with Rice to convey their anxiety over the chance of an attack against American interests, possibly within the United States. It was, according to Woodward, the "starkest warning they had given the White House" on bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Rice, in Woodward's account, was "polite," but Tenet and Black "felt the brush-off."When Woodward's book came out, in October 2006, Rice denied that the meeting--which the State Dept. confirmed took place--was exceptional, and disputed Woodward's characterization. “What I am quite certain of is that I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says, that there was about to be an attack in the United States," she said. "[A]nd the idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible.”
• 29 July 2001 - Condoleezza Rice says of Saddam, "We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt." However, she says, the administration will continue to apply "pressure."
• 06 August - Presidential Daily Briefing handed to Bush: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." FBI information, it said, "indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." Ron Suskind's book "The One Percent Doctrine" will report that a CIA officer flew to Bush's ranch to call the President's attention to the document. After the briefing, Bush said, "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

September

• 01 September - Iraqi defector Curveball, granted asylum in Germany, ceases cooperating with German intelligence officials. The CIA assures the Germans that they have other sources that corroborate Curveball's claims that Iraq has at least seven mobile factories brewing biological poisons. The reality is that they have three, and all three will be proven to be frauds. Two have connections to Ahmad Chalabi.
• 10 September - In a lengthy speech to Pentagon workers, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says that there is an "adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America." Rumsfeld says it is an enemy "more subtle and more implacable" than the former Soviet Union, and is "closer to home" than "the last decrepit dictators of the world." He is speaking of Pentagon bureaucracy.
• 11 September 2001 - According to notes taken by Stephen Cambone, Donald Rumsfeld issued instructions for Richard Myers at 2:40 p.m. for "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL...Near term target needs - go massive - sweep it all up, things related and not."
• 12 September - According to Richard Clarke's book, "Against All Enemies," Bush collars Clarke and says, "I know you have a lot to do and all, but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way." Clarke responds, "But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this." Bush tells him, "I know, I know, but -- see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred...."
• 13 September 2001 - at a meeting of Principals at Camp David, Paul Wolfowitz broaches the prospects of attacking Iraq.
• 16 September - TIM RUSSERT [Meet the Press]: Do we have any evidence linking Saddam Hussein or Iraqis to [9/11]? VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: No.
• 18 September - Ahmed Chalabi is a guest speaker at a two-day meeting at the Pentagon of the Defense Policy Board, an influential body packed with high-level Defense officials and opinion makers and chaired by Richard Perle, according to an article in Vanity Fair. ("The Path to War," May 2004)
• 19 September - President Bush tells CIA chief George Tenet, "I want to know about links between Saddam and al Qaeda. The Vice President knows some things that might be helpful." Vice President Cheney tells Tenet about a report that one of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta, met with senior Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague. Tenet promises to investigate. Two days later, Tenet reports back: CIA's Prague office thinks the Atta story "doesn't add up." Moreover, the intelligence community knows that Atta's credit card and phone were used in Virginia during the period in question. Cheney, however, will continue to cite the alleged meeting in public appearances.
• 20 September - A letter to President Bush from the neoconservative Project for the New American Century says, "Even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq." Signatories include The New Republic editor Martin Peretz.
  • Douglas J. Feith writes to Donald Rumsfeld and "expresse[s] disappointment at the limited options immediately available in Afghanistan and the lack of ground options. [He] suggest[s] instead hitting terrorists outside the Middle East in the initial offensive, perhaps deliberately selecting a non-al Qaeda target like Iraq."
  • Bush and Blair meet for a private White House dinner. According to the former British Ambassador to Washington, Blair told Bush not to get distracted from the war on terror. Bush replied, "I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq."
• 21 September - President Bush is informed in a highly classified briefing that the US intelligence community cannot link Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks and that there is little evidence pointing to collaborative ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

October

• 01 October - Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the CIA receives a report from Italian intelligence describing a public visit by an Iraqi diplomat to Niger in 1999 and suggesting that the diplomat's covert purpose was to procure yellowcake uranium. The American intelligence community dismisses the report as "amateurish and unsubstantiated" but it is nevertheless sent directly to the Vice President. It is the one of the first examples of "stovepiping," the practice whereby Bush officials, in the words of former National Security Council member Kenneth Pollack, "dismantle[d] the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership." On the cover of its first post-9/11 issue, the Weekly Standard runs the word WANTED under pictures of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
• 29 October - The Weekly Standard runs an article entitled "Why Iraq?" It alleges that Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Europe and that Iraq is linked to the anthrax attacks in America (the latter because one expert thinks it is unlikely a terrorist group could develop anthrax on its own). It hints at Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks. And, for a kicker, "If all we do is contain Saddam's Iraq, it is a virtual certainty that Baghdad will soon have nuclear weapons."

November

• 08 November - The New York Times and Frontline report that an Iraqi defector, an army general, claims that the Iraqi military trained Arab fighters to hijack airplanes. Mother Jones later exposes the Iraqi general as bogus and linked to Ahmed Chalabi.
• 11 November - Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, senior Al Qaeda official in charge of the network's training camp in Khalden, Afghanistan, is captured in Pakistan.
• 21 November - According to Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack": "President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically, and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, 'What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.'" Woodward adds that, immediately after Rumsfeld and [General Tommy] Franks work out a deal under which Franks can spend any money he needs. "And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the preparations in Kuwait, specifically to make war possible."
• 30 November - In a meeting with Condoleezza Rice and George Tenet, Dick Cheney lays out what will come to be known as the One Percent Doctrine. "If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response." The quote is from Ron Suskind's 2006 book, "The One Percent Doctrine." "As to 'evidence,'" Suskind writes, "the bar was set so low that the word itself almost didn't apply."

December

• 01 December - According to Bob Woodward, Rumsfeld orders Franks to begin work on an Iraq war plan. Bush will meet with military leaders regarding the plan on a regular basis starting late December, despite public assurances that the administration is seeking a diplomatic solution to its showdown with Saddam.
• 03 December - In an interview with Newsweek, Bush declares "Saddam is evil."
• 09 December - Vice President Cheney, appearing on Meet the Press, claims it has "been pretty well confirmed that [Mohammed Atta] 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."He will continue to say this even after the FBI, CIA, and Czech intelligence back off the claim. The 9/11 Commission will debunk it thoroughly.
• 12 December - Tommy Franks tells Donald Rumsfeld that he has a plan for softening up Iraq. "I'm thinking in terms of spikes, Mr. Secretary," he writes in his book "American Soldier." "Spurts of activity followed by periods of inactivity. We want the Iraqis to become accustomed to military expansion, and then apparent contraction." The Downing Street memos have proof that these spikes were used. In July 2002 British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon is quoted as saying that the US "had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime." This seem to contradict President Bush, who said, in Oct 2002, that "I have not ordered the use of force. I hope the use of force will not become necessary."
• 20 December - New York Times reporter Judith Miller writes a front-page story for the paper titled "AN IRAQI DEFECTOR TELLS OF WORK ON AT LEAST 20 HIDDEN WEAPONS SITES." The source is a man delivered to Miller by Ahmed Chalabi. The man failed a CIA polygraph test before the article came out, and his claims were discredited by informed intelligence experts. The polygraph is not mentioned in Miller's story. "Government experts" call his information "reliable and significant."
• 28 December - According to Woodward's Plan of Attack, General Tommy Franks briefs Bush on the Pentagon's Iraq war planning at his Crawford ranch. Bush had directed the start of such planning five weeks earlier. Afterwards, Bush tells reporters they spoke about Afghanistan.

2002

January

• 01. al-Libi's rendition to Cairo. After two weeks of increasingly harsh interrogation, including waterboarding, Libi breaks down and starts to talk. But he provides information he is not in a position to know, telling his interrogators that Al Qaeda operatives received chemical-weapons training from the Iraqi government. The DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) will express concerns early on that Libi is telling his questioners what they want to hear. Nevertheless, Libi's information will be the basis for the Bush administration's repeated claim that Iraq provided Al Qaeda with training on chemical and biological weapons. Libi will later recant his testimony.
• 29. Bush calls Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the "Axis of Evil" in his State of the Union address. The man who coined the phrase, Bush speechwriter David Frum, will later write in his book that he came up with it in answer to the question, "Can you sum up in a sentence or two our best case for going after Iraq?"

February

• 01. A report from the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) informs top officials that captured Al Qaeda operative al-Libi is likely a fabricator. Periodically after this point, high-level members of the Bush Administration, including the President, will cite al-Libi's information in public appearances. Colin Powell relies heavily on accounts provided by al-Libi for his speech to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003, saying that he was tracing "the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in [the use of chemical] weapons to Al Qaeda." The same DIA report states, "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements [like al Qaeda]. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control."

Sen. Bob Graham in 2004 relates an exchange that occurred at this time: "I was asked by one of the senior commanders of Central Command to go into his office. We did, the door was closed, and he turned to me, and he said, 'Senator, we have stopped fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan. We are moving military and intelligence personnel and resources out of Afghanistan to get ready for a future war in Iraq.'"

• 08. Bush, citing the highly suspect testimony of captured Al Qaeda operative al-Libi, says in a radio address, "Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training."
• 11. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tells Tony Snow of Fox News: "Iraq is probably not a nuclear threat at the present time."
• 26. Former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson travels to Niger to check out claims, based on a purported memorandum of understanding, that Saddam tried to obtain yellowcake uranium there. He learns that any authentic memorandum of understanding concerning yellowcake sales would have required the signatures of Niger's Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Minister of Mines. No one has signed such a document. He also concludes that as Niger pre–sold all its uranium to Japanese and European partners, it would have none left to sell to Iraq.

March

• 01. Seymour Hersh reports in The New Yorker, in October 2003, that by this time " it was understood by many in the White House that the President had decided, in his own mind, to go to war." Hersh adds, "The undeclared decision had a devastating impact on the continuing struggle against terrorism. The Bush Administration took many intelligence operations that had been aimed at Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups around the world and redirected them to the Persian Gulf. Linguists and special operatives were abruptly reassigned, and several ongoing anti-terrorism intelligence programs were curtailed."

The President seems to affirm this when he pokes his head into a meeting between Rice and three senators and says, "Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out."

One year later, in March 2003, President Bush will tell the public, "I've not made up our [sic] mind about military action."

"Chalabi's defector reports [are] now flowing from the Pentagon directly to the Vice-President's office, and then on to the President, with little prior evaluation by intelligence professionals," according to an October 2003 report by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker. The piece quotes Greg Thielmann, top intelligence official for the State Department, as saying, "There was considerable skepticism throughout the intelligence community about the reliability of Chalabi's sources, but the defector reports were coming all the time. Knock one down and another comes along. Meanwhile, the garbage was being shoved straight to the President."

A CIA report describing the findings of Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger­findings discrediting the claim that Saddam attempted to obtain yellowcake uranium from that country­is circulated widely throughout the intelligence community. It is not flagged for high-level White House officials, and they do not see it.

The State Department's intelligence bureau, INR, publishes an assessment entitled, "Niger: Sale of Uranium to Iraq Is Unlikely." According to the 2004 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, the INR analyst who drafted the document said it was produced at the behest of the Vice President's office.

• 08. The Downing Street memo known as the "Iraq: Options Paper " is prepared by Tony Blair's defense aides to outline military options for regime change in Iraq.

It reads, in part: "Iraq continues to develop WMD, although our intelligence is poor. Saddam has used WMD in the past and could do so again if his regime were threatened, though there is no greater threat now than in recent years that Saddam will use WMD."

"The US has lost confidence in containment. Some in government want Saddam removed. The success of Operation Enduring Freedom, distrust of UN sanctions and inspection regimes, and unfinished business from 1991 are all factors. Washington believes the legal basis for an attack on Iraq already exists. Nor will it necessarily be governed by wider political factors. The US may be willing to work with a much smaller coalition than we think desirable."

"Regime change has no basis in international law."

• 13. President Bush, in a press conference, says of Bin Laden: "I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him."
• 14. The Downing Street document later known as the "David Manning memo" is written by Foreign Policy Advisor David Manning for Tony Blair after Manning's meeting with his US-counterpart Condoleezza Rice.It reads, in part: "Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed.

"Bush has yet to find the answers to the big questions:

–**how to persuade international opinion that military action against Iraq is necessary and justified; –**what value to put on the exiled Iraqi opposition; –**how to coordinate a US/allied military campaign with internal opposition (assuming there is any);

• • what happens on the morning after?

"I think there is a real risk that the Administration underestimates the difficulties. They may agree that failure isn't an option, but this does not mean that they will avoid it.

"Will Americans really put in enough ground troops to do the job if the Kurdish/Shi'ite stratagem fails? Even if they do, will they be willing to take the sort of casualties that the Republican Guard may inflict on them if it turns out to be an urban war, and Iraqi troops don't conveniently collapse in a heap as Richard Perle and others confidently predict?"

• 23 July 2002 - The Downing Street Memo is written, in which British intelligence said "C Richard Dearlove 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."

• August 2002 - White House Iraq Group formed.

• 6 September 2002 - Andrew Card quoted by New York Times saying "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." On why the administration waited until after Labor Day to try to sell the American people on military action against Iraq.

• 7-8 September 2002 - the New York Times publishes a frontpage story by Judith Miller making the 'aluminum tubes' accusation.Bush and his top advisers blanket the airways, talking about the dangers posed by Iraq:
  • On NBC's "Meet the Press," Vice President Dick Cheney accused Saddam of moving aggressively to develop nuclear weapons over the past 14 months to add to his stockpile of chemical and biological arms.
  • On CNN, Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that "there will always be some uncertainty" in determining how close Iraq may be to obtaining a nuclear weapon but says "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
  • On CBS, Bush says U.N. weapons inspectors, before they were denied access to Iraq in 1998, concluded that Saddam was "six months away from developing a weapon." He also cited satellite photos released by a U.N. agency Friday that show unexplained construction at Iraq sites that weapons inspectors once visited to search for evidence Saddam was trying to develop nuclear arms. "I don't know what more evidence we need," Bush said.

• 14 October 2002: Bush says of Saddam "This is a man that we know has had connections with al Qaeda. This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al Qaeda as a forward army."

2003

• 21 January 2003 - Bush says of Saddam "He has weapons of mass destruction -- the world's deadliest weapons -- which pose a direct threat to the United States, our citizens and our friends and allies."

• 5 February 2003 - Colin Powell addresses the United Nations, asserting that there was "no doubt in my mind" that Saddam was working to obtain key components to produce nuclear weapons.

• 19 March 2003 - The US invades Iraq.