Decision Points by George W. Bush
Ref: George W. Bush (2011). Decision Points. Virgin Books.
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Summary
The Memoirs of George W. Bush, 45th President of the United States of America.
I worried about America drifting left, toward a version of welfare-state Europe, where central government planning crowded out free enterprise.
For the most part, I didn’t seek Dad’s advice on major issues. He and I both understood that I had access to more and better information than he did.
The focus of my presidency, which I had expected to be domestic policy, was now war.
Major Accomplishments: Raised Federal Education Spending, Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Funded Embryonic Stem Cell Research (using IVF embryos), The combination of tight budgets and the rising tax revenues resulting from economic growth helped drive down the deficit from 3.5% of the GDP in 2004, to 2.6% in 2005, to 1.9% in 2006, to 1.2% in 2007.
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Economy
My experiences in business school, China, and the oil business were converging into a set of convictions: The free market provided the fairest way to allocate resources. Lower taxes rewarded hard work and encouraged risk taking, which spurred job creation. Eliminating barriers to trade created new export markets for American producers and more choices for our consumers. Government should respect its constitutional limits and give people the freedom to live their lives.
As president, I had three key economic advisers; the National Economic Council director, the Council of Economic Advisers chairman, and the Secretary of the Treasury, and two key national security positions, the SECDEF and the Director of the CIA. As a wartime president, I told them I had two priorities: protecting the homeland and supporting our troops, both in combat and as veterans. Beyond those areas, we submitted budgets that slowed the growth of discretionary spending every year of my presidency. For the last five years, my budgets held this spending growth below the rate of inflation—in real terms, a cut.
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Housing Market Collapse
A more sophisticated explanation dates back to the boom of the 1990s. While the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 3.8%, developing Asian countries such as China, India, and South Korea averaged almost twice that. Many of these economies stockpiled large cash reserves. So did energy-producing nations, which benefited from a tenfold rise in oil prices between 1993 and 2008. Ben Bernanke called this phenomenon a “global saving glut.” Others deemed it a giant pool of money. A great deal of this foreign capital flowed back to the United States. America was viewed as an attractive place to invest, thanks to our strong capital markets, reliable legal system, and productive workforce. Foreign investors bought large numbers of U.S. Treasury bonds, which drove down their yield. Naturally, investors started looking for higher returns. One prospect was the booming U.S. housing market. Between 1993 and 2007, the average American home price roughly doubled. Builders constructed homes at a rapid pace. Interest rates were low. Credit was easy. Lenders wrote mortgages for almost anyone—including “subprime” borrowers, whose low credit scores made them a higher risk. Wall Street spotted an opportunity. Investment banks purchased large numbers of mortgages from lenders, sliced them up, repackaged them, and converted them into complex financial securities. Credit rating agencies, which received lucrative fees from investment banks, blessed many of these assets with AAA ratings. Financial firms sold huge numbers of credit default swaps, bets on whether the mortgages underlying the securities would default. Trading under fancy names such as collateralized debt obligations, the new mortgage-based products yielded the returns investors were seeking. Wall Street sold them aggressively. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, private companies with congressional charters and lax regulation, fueled the market for mortgage-backed securities. The two government-sponsored enterprises bought up half the mortgages in the United States, securitized many of the loans, and sold them around the world. Investors bought voraciously because they believed Fannie and Freddie paper carried a U.S. government guarantee. It wasn’t just overseas investors who were attracted by higher returns. American banks borrowed large sums of money against their capital, a practice known as leverage, and loaded up on the mortgage-backed securities. Some of the most aggressive investors were giant new financial service companies. Many had taken advantage of the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932, which prohibited commercial banks from engaging in the investment business. At the height of the housing boom, homeownership hit an all-time high of almost 70%. I had supported policies to expand homeownership, including down-payment assistance for low-income and first-time buyers. I was pleased to see the ownership society grow. But the exuberance of the moment masked the underlying risk. Together, the global pool of cash, easy monetary policy, booming housing market, insatiable appetite for mortgage-backed assets, complexity of Wall Street financial engineering, and leverage of financial institutions created a house of cards. This precarious structure was fated to collapse as soon as the underlying card—the nonstop growth of housing prices—was pulled out. That was clear in retrospect. But very few saw it at the time, including me.
Mid-2007: US home values declined for the first time in 13 years. Homeowners defaulted on their mortgages in increasing numbers, and financial companies wrote down billions of dollars in mortgage-related assets.
Bear Sterns
Bear Stearns, one of America’s largest investment banks, was facing a liquidity crisis. Like other Wall Street institutions, Bear was heavily leveraged. For every $1 it held in capital, the firm had borrowed $33 to invest, much of it in mortgage-backed securities.
Bear could be the first domino in a series of failing firms. While I was concerned about creating moral hazard, I worried more about a financial collapse.
Fannie May & Freddie Mac
They had expanded beyond their mission of promoting homeownership. They had behaved like a hedge fund that raised huge amounts of money and took significant risks.
Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers was heavily leveraged and highly exposed to the faltering housing market.
15 Sep, 2008: Housing Market Collapse; Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old investment house, files for bankruptcy. The Dow Jones plunged 500 points. A panic mentality set in. Investors started selling off securities and buying Treasury bills and gold. Clients pulled their accounts from investment banks. The credit markets tightened as lenders held onto their cash. AIG, with more than $85 billion in mortgage-backed securities was on the brink of collapse. The USG made a deal with AIG and the NY FED loaned them $85 billion.
10 Sep, 2008: Lehman Brothers announces its worst-ever financial loss, $3.9 billion in a single quarter. Confidence in Lehman vanished. Short-sellers, traders seeking to profit from declining stock prices, had helped drive Lehman stock from $16.20 to $3.65 per share. There was no way the firm could survive the weekend.
1999: Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932, which prohibited commercial banks from engaging in the investment business.
Hank flew to New York to oversee negotiations. He told me there were two possible buyers: Bank of America and Barclays, a British bank. Neither firm was willing to take Lehman’s problematic assets. Hank and Tim Geithner devised a way to structure a deal without committing taxpayer dollars. They convinced major Wall Street CEOs to contribute to a fund that would absorb Lehman’s toxic assets. Essentially, Lehman’s rivals would save the firm from bankruptcy. Hank was hopeful that one of the buyers would close a deal. It soon became clear that Bank of America had its eyes on another purchase, Merrill Lynch. That left Barclays as Lehman’s last hope. But on Sunday, less than twelve hours before the Asian markets opened for Monday trading, financial regulators in London informed the Fed and SEC they were unwilling to approve a purchase by the British bank. “What the hell is going on?” I asked Hank. “I thought we were going to get a deal.” “The British aren’t prepared to approve,” he said. While Hank and I spoke all the time, those phone calls on Sunday—the supposed day of rest—always seemed to be the worst. It felt like we were having the same conversation again and again. The only thing changing was the name of the failing firms. But this time, we weren’t going to be able to stop the domino from toppling over. “Will we be able to explain why Lehman is different from Bear Stearns?” I asked Hank. “Without JPMorgan as a buyer for Bear, it would have failed. We just couldn’t find a buyer for Lehman,” he said. I felt we had done the best we could. But time had run out for Lehman. The 158-year-old investment house filed for bankruptcy just after midnight on Monday, September 15. All hell broke loose in the morning. Legislators praised our decision not to intervene. The Washington Post editorialized, “The U.S. government was right to let Lehman tank.” The stock market was not so positive. The Dow Jones plunged more than 500 points. A panic mentality set in. Investors started selling off securities and buying Treasury bills and gold. Clients pulled their accounts from investment banks. The credit markets tightened as lenders held onto their cash. The gears of the financial system, which depend on liquidity to serve as the grease, were grinding to a halt. As if that weren’t enough, the American International Group, a giant insurance company, was facing its own crisis. AIG wrote property and life insurance policies and insured municipalities, pension funds, 401(k)s, and other investment vehicles that affected everyday Americans. All those businesses were healthy. Yet the firm was somehow on the brink of implosion. “How did this happen?” I asked Hank. The answer was that one unit of the firm, AIG Financial Products, had insured large amounts of mortgage-backed obligations—and invested in even more. With mortgages defaulting in record numbers, the firm was facing cash calls for at least $85 billion that it did not have. If the company didn’t come up with the money immediately, it would not only fail, it would bring down major financial institutions and international investors with it. The New York Fed had tried to line up a private-sector solution. But no bank could raise the kind of money AIG needed in such little time. There was only one way to keep the firm alive: The federal government would have to step in. Ben Bernanke reported that AIG, unlike Lehman, held enough collateral from its stable insurance businesses to qualify for an emergency Fed loan. He laid out the terms: The New York Fed would lend AIG $85 billion secured by AIG’s stable and valuable insurance subsidiaries. In return, the government would receive a warrant for 79.9% of AIG’s shares. There was nothing appealing about the deal. It was basically a nationalization of America’s largest insurance company. Less than forty-eight hours after Lehman filed for bankruptcy, saving AIG would look like a glaring contradiction. But that was a hell of a lot better than a financial collapse.
If credit markets remained frozen, the heaviest burdens would fall on American families: steep drops in the value of retirement accounts, massive job losses, and further falling home values.
3 Oct, 2008: The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is signed into US law (Senate: 74-25, House: 263-171); with $700 billion to strengthen the banks and unfreeze the credit markets. Purchasing equity would inject capital—the lifeblood of finance—directly into the undercapitalized banking system. That would reduce the risk of sudden failure and free up more money for banks to lend.
Auto Industry Bail Outs
My economic advisers had warned that the immediate bankruptcy of the Big Three could cost more than a million jobs, decrease tax revenues by $150 billion, and set back America’s GDP by hundreds of billions of dollars.
Congress had passed a bill offering $25 billion in loans to the auto companies in exchange for making their fleets more fuel-efficient. I was unable to convince Congress to release those loans immediately, so the companies could survive long enough to give the new president and his team time to address the situation. The only option left was to loan money from TARP. I told the team I wanted to use the loans as an opportunity to insist that the automakers develop viable business plans. Under the loans’ stringent terms, the companies would have until April 2009 to become fiscally viable and self-sustaining by restructuring their operations, renegotiating labor contracts, and reaching new agreements with bondholders. If they could not meet all those conditions, the loans would be immediately called, forcing bankruptcy.
One of the questions I’m asked most often is how to avoid another financial crisis. My first answer is that I’m not sure we’re out of the woods on this one yet. Financial institutions around the world are still unwinding their leverage, and governments are saddled with too much debt. To fully recover, the federal government must improve its long-term fiscal position by reducing spending, addressing the unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare, and creating the conditions for the private sector—especially small businesses—to generate new jobs. Once the economy is on firm footing, Fannie and Freddie should be converted into private companies that compete in the mortgage market on a level playing field with other firms. Banks should be required to meet sensible capital requirements to prevent overleveraging. The credit-rating agencies need to reevaluate their model for analyzing complex financial assets. And boards of directors must put an end to compensation packages that create the wrong incentives and reward executives for failure. At the same time, we must be careful not to overcorrect. Over Regulation slows investment, stifles innovation, and discourages entrepreneurship. The government should unwind its involvement in the banking, auto, and insurance sectors. As it addresses financial regulation, Congress should not infringe on the Federal Reserve’s independence in conducting monetary policy. And the financial crisis should not become an excuse to raise taxes, which would only undermine the economic growth required to regain our strength. Above all, our country must maintain our faith in free markets, free enterprise, and free trade. Free markets have made America a land of opportunity and, over time, helped raise the standard of living for successive generations. Abroad, free markets have transformed struggling nations into economic powers and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Democratic capitalism, while imperfect and in need of rational oversight, is by far the most successful economic model ever devised.
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—Social Welfare Programs—
I worried about America drifting left, toward a version of welfare-state Europe, where central government planning crowded out free enterprise.
Unsustainable growth in entitlement spending accounts for the vast majority of the future federal debt.
Social Security
In 2018 Social Security is projected to take in less money than it paid out. The shortfall would increase every year, until the system hit bankruptcy in 2042.
The plan I embraced was the brainchild of a Democrat, Robert Pozen. His proposal, known as progressive indexing, set benefits to grow fastest for the poorest Americans and slowest for the wealthiest. There would be a sliding scale for everyone in between. By changing the benefit growth formula, the plan would wipe out the vast majority of the Social Security shortfall. In addition, all Americans would have the opportunity to earn higher returns through personal retirement accounts.
The system worked fine when there were 40 workers for every beneficiary, as there were in 1935. But over time, demographics changed. Life expectancy rose. The birthrate fell. As a result, by 2005 there were only three workers paying into the Social Security system for every beneficiary taking money out. By the time a young person starting work in the first decade of the twenty-first century retires, the ratio will be two to one.
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Defense
The Two Key National Security Positions are the SECDEF and the director of the CIA.
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HIV
Nevirapine: reduces the rate of mother-to-child HIV transmission by 50%.
The traditional model of foreign aid was paternalistic: A wealthy donor nation wrote a check and told the recipient how to spend it. I decided to take a new approach in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. Our national security was tied directly to human suffering. Societies mired in poverty and disease foster hopelessness. And hopelessness leaves people ripe for recruitment by terrorists and extremists. By confronting suffering in places like Africa, America would strengthen its security and collective soul. We set three objectives: treat two million AIDS patients, prevent seven million new infections, and care for ten million HIV-affected people. We would partner with the government and people of countries committed to battling the disease. Local leaders would develop the strategies to meet specific goals, and we would support them.
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UN
I considered the UN to be cumbersome, bureaucratic, and inefficient.
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No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
2001: The US Congress passes NCLB by a bipartisan landslide.
The premise of the NCLB law is that success cannot be measured by dollars spent; it has to be judged by results achieved.
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Abortion
The abortion issue is difficult, sensitive, and personal. My faith and conscience led me to conclude that human life is sacred. God created man in His image and therefore every person has value in His eyes. When I saw Barbara and Jenna on the sonogram for the first time, there was no doubt in my mind they were distinct and alive. The fact that they could not speak for themselves only enhanced society’s duty to defend them.
One of my first acts in the White House was to reinstate the so-called Mexico City Policy.
Mexico City Policy: Prevents federal funding for groups that promote abortion overseas.
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Stem Cells
I was the first president in history to fund embryonic stem cell research. Plus, there were no restrictions on funding from the private sector. I decided that the government would fund research on stem cell lines derived from embryos that had already been destroyed. At the same time, I would ask Congress to increase federal funding for alternative sources of stem cells that brought no ethical controversy.
Opponents argued that there was a moral difference between allowing embryos to die naturally and proactively ending their lives. Sanctioning the destruction of life to save life, they argued, crossed into dangerous moral territory. As one put it, “The fact that a being is going to die does not entitle us to use it as a natural resource for exploitation.”
During my administration, scientists received federal grants to support embryonic stem cell research. Scientists also used new federal funding for alternative stem cell research to explore the potential of adult bone marrow, placentas, amniotic fluid, and other non-embryonic sources. Their research yielded new treatments for patients suffering from dozens of diseases—free of moral drawbacks. For example, doctors discovered a way to collect stem cells harmlessly from the blood of umbilical cords to treat patients suffering from leukemia and sickle-cell anemia. The primary source of these embryos was In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) clinics. When a couple signed up for IVF, doctors usually fertilized more eggs than they implanted in the prospective mother. As a result, some embryos would be left after the treatment was complete. They were usually frozen and stored by the fertility clinic. Since these so-called spare embryos were not going to be used to conceive children, scientists argued, didn’t it make sense to use them for research that could potentially save lives?
Alternative Embryo Sources
Skin Cells: Two teams of researchers, one in Wisconsin and one in Japan, had reprogrammed an adult skin cell to behave like an embryonic stem cell. By adding just four genes to the adult cell, scientists were able to replicate the medical promise of embryonic stem cells without moral controversy.
IVF Embryo’s: Unused Embryo’s implanted during IVF.
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Immigration
The first component was a major new investment in border security, including a pledge to double the size of the Border Patrol by the end of 2008 and temporarily deploy six thousand National Guard troops to support the Border Patrol. The second part was the temporary worker program, which would include a tamper-proof identification card. The third was stricter immigration enforcement at businesses, which would reduce exploitation and help slow demand for illegal workers. Fourth was to promote assimilation by requiring immigrants to learn English. Finally, I took on the thorniest question in the debate: What to do with the approximately twelve million illegal immigrants in the country?
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Hurricane Katrina
By law, state and local authorities lead the response to natural disasters, with the federal government playing a supporting role.
There was one exception to Posse Comitatus. If I declared New Orleans to be in a state of insurrection, I could deploy federal troops equipped with full law enforcement powers. The last time the Insurrection Act had been invoked was 1992, when Dad sent the military to suppress the Los Angeles riots. In that case, Governor Pete Wilson of California had requested the federal deployment. The Insurrection Act could be invoked over a governor’s objections. In the most famous example, President Dwight Eisenhower defied Governor Orval Faubus by deploying the 101st Airborne to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision desegregating Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
All my instincts told me we needed to get federal troops into New Orleans to stop the violence and speed the recovery. But I was stuck with a resistant governor, a reluctant Pentagon, and an antiquated law.
I faced a lot of criticism as president. I didn’t like hearing people claim I had lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was a racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all-time low. I told Laura at the time that it was the worst moment of my presidency. I feel the same way today.
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Faith Based Initiatives
When I ran for president, I decided to make a nationwide faith-based initiative a central part of my campaign. “In every instance where my administration sees a responsibility to help people, we will look first to faith-based organizations, to charities, and to community groups.”
Nine days after my inauguration, I issued executive orders creating an Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in the White House and in five Cabinet departments. The offices changed regulations and broke down barriers that had prevented faith-based charities from accessing the federal grant-making process.
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Israel & Palestine
I refused to accept the moral equivalence between Palestinian suicide attacks on innocent civilians and Israeli military actions intended to protect their people.
The roadmap included three phases:
Phase 1: Palestinians would stop terrorist attacks, fight corruption, reform their political system, and hold democratic elections. In return, Israel would withdraw from unauthorized settlements.
Phase 2: Both sides would begin direct negotiations, leading to the creation of a provisional Palestinian state.
Phase 3: Both sides would resolve the most complicated issues, including the status of Jerusalem, the rights of Palestinian refugees, and permanent borders. Arab nations would support the negotiations and establish normal relations with Israel.
The dialogue culminated in a secret proposal from Olmert to Abbas. His offer would have returned the vast majority of the territory in the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians, accepted the construction of a tunnel connecting the two Palestinian territories, allowed a limited number of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel, established Jerusalem as a joint capital of both Israel and Palestine, and entrusted control of the holy sites to a panel of nonpolitical elders.
Like Hamas (Palestine), Hezbollah (Lebanon) had a legitimate political party and a terrorist wing armed and funded by Iran and supported by Syria.
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Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
The Department of Homeland Security, while prone to the inefficiencies of any large bureaucracy, was an improvement over twenty-two uncoordinated agencies.
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Iran
Ahmadinejad announced that Iran would resume uranium conversion. He claimed it was part of Iran’s civilian nuclear power program, but the world recognized the move as a step toward enrichment for a weapon. Vladimir Putin—with my support—offered to provide fuel enriched in Russia for Iran’s civilian reactors, once it built some, so that Iran would not need its own enrichment facilities. Ahmadinejad rejected the proposal.
UNSCS 1737 & 1747: Banned Iranian arms exports, froze key Iranian assets, and prohibited any country from providing Iran with nuclear weapons–related equipment.
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9-11
September 11 redefined sacrifice. It redefined duty. And it redefined my job. The story of that week is the key to understanding my presidency. There were so many decisions that followed, many of them controversial and complex. Yet after 9/11, I felt my responsibility was clear. For as long as I held office, I could never forget what happened to America that day. I would pour my heart and soul into protecting the country, whatever it took.
· Response Options to 9-11 (Pentagon’s Pre-Existing Contingency Plan):
Cruise missile strikes on al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. The plan could be executed immediately, with no risk to American troops.
Combine cruise missile strikes with manned bomber attacks. This would allow us to hit more targets, while exposing our pilots to limited risk.
The most aggressive option was to employ cruise missiles, bombers, and boots on the ground. This was mostly a theoretical option; the military would have to develop the details from scratch.
From the beginning, I knew the public reaction to my decisions would be colored by whether there was another attack. If none happened, whatever I did would probably look like an overreaction. If we were attacked again, people would demand to know why I hadn’t done more.
Between 9/11 and mid-2003, the CIA reported to me on an average of 400 specific threats each month. The CIA tracked more than 20 separate alleged large-scale attack plots, ranging from possible chemical and biological weapons operations in Europe to potential homeland attacks involved sleeper operatives. Some reports mentioned specific targets, including major landmarks, military bases, universities, and shopping malls.
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—Global Wars on Terror (GWOT)—
Bush Doctrine: First, make no distinction between the terrorists and the nations that harbor them—and hold both to account. Second, take the fight to the enemy overseas before they can attack us again here at home. Third, confront threats before they fully materialize. And fourth, advance liberty and hope as an alternative to the enemy’s ideology of repression and fear.
We have seen our vulnerability—and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny—prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder—violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom. We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. … So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.
In my State of the Union address two days earlier, I had outlined the threats posed by Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. “States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world,” I said. The media seized on the phrase “axis of evil.” They took the line to mean that the three countries had formed an alliance. That missed the point. The axis I referred to was the link between the governments that pursued WMD and the terrorists who could use those weapons.
From the beginning, we sought to bring as many nations as possible into the rebuilding effort. A multilateral approach would defray the financial burden and invest nations around the world in the ideological struggle against extremists. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan hosted an international donors’ conference in January 2002. The Tokyo meeting yielded $4.5 billion in pledges.
Our government was not prepared for nation building.
We faced an enemy that had no capital to call home and no armies to track on the battlefield. Defeating them would require the full resources of our national power, from gathering intelligence to freezing terrorists’ bank accounts to deploying troops.
Afghanistan
In 2001, Afghanistan was the world’s third-poorest country. Less than 10% of the population had access to health care. More than four out of five women were illiterate. While Afghanistan’s land area and population were similar to those of Texas, its annual economic output was comparable to that of Billings, Montana. Life expectancy was a bleak 46 years.
“We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”
Removing al Qaeda’s safe haven in Afghanistan was essential to protecting the American people.
I worried about overextending our military by undertaking peacekeeping missions as we had in Bosnia and Somalia. But after 9/11, I changed my mind. Afghanistan was the ultimate nation building mission. We had liberated the country from a primitive dictatorship, and we had a moral obligation to leave behind something better. We also had a strategic interest in helping the Afghan people build a free society. The terrorists took refuge in places of chaos, despair, and repression. A democratic Afghanistan would be a hopeful alternative to the vision of the extremists.
America and several key allies decided to divvy up responsibility for helping to build Afghan civil society. We took the lead in training a new Afghan National Army (ANA). Germany focused on training the national police (ANP). Great Britain adopted a counternarcotics mission. Italy worked to reform the justice system. Japan launched an initiative to disarm and demobilize warlords and their militias. The multilateral military mission proved a disappointment as well. Every member of NATO had sent troops to Afghanistan. So had more than a dozen other countries. But many parliaments imposed heavy restrictions—known as national caveats—on what their troops were permitted to do. Some were not allowed to patrol at night. Others could not engage in combat. The result was a disorganized and ineffective force, with troops fighting by different rules and many not fighting at all.
OEF Phasing:
1) Connect SF with the CIA to clear the way for conventional forces to follow.
2) mount a massive air campaign to take out Al Qaeda and Taliban targets and conduct humanitarian airdrops to deliver relief aid to the Afghan people.
3) Deploy ground troops from both American and coalition partners to enter the country and hunt down remaining Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.
4) Stabilize the country and help the Afghan people build a free society.
Pakistan: As a way to staunch the flow of Taliban fighters, Musharraf informed us that he had recently struck a series of deals with tribes in the border region. Under the agreements, Pakistani forces would leave the areas alone, while tribal leaders would commit to stopping the Taliban from recruiting operatives or infiltrating into Afghanistan. While well intentioned, the strategy failed. The tribes did not have the will or the capacity to control the extremists. Some estimates indicated that the flow of Taliban fighters into Afghanistan increased fourfold.
Iraq
When 9/11 hit, and we had to take a fresh look at every threat in the world. There were state sponsors of terror. There were sworn enemies of America. There were hostile governments that threatened their neighbors. There were nations that violated international demands. There were dictators who repressed their people. And there were regimes that pursued WMD. Iraq combined all those threats. Saddam Hussein didn’t just sympathize with terrorists. He had paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and given sanctuary to terrorists like Abu Nidal, who led attacks that killed nineteen people at an Israeli airline ticket counters in Rome and Vienna, and Abu Abbas, who hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered an elderly, wheelchair-bound American. Saddam Hussein wasn’t just a sworn enemy of America. He had fired at our aircraft, issued a statement praising 9/11, and made an assassination attempt on a former president, my father. Saddam Hussein didn’t just threaten his neighbors. He had invaded two of them, Iran in the 1980s and Kuwait in the 1990s. Saddam Hussein didn’t just violate international demands. He had defied sixteen UN resolutions, dating back to the Gulf War. Saddam Hussein didn’t just rule brutally. He and his henchmen had tortured innocent people, raped political opponents in front of their families, scalded dissidents with acid, and dumped tens of thousands of Iraqis into mass graves. In 2000, Saddam’s government decreed that people who criticized the president or his family would have their tongues slashed out. Later that year, an Iraqi obstetrician was beheaded on charges of prostitution. The woman’s true crime was speaking out about corruption in the Iraqi health ministry. Saddam Hussein didn’t just pursue weapons of mass destruction. He had used them. He deployed mustard gas and nerve agents against the Iranians and massacred more than five thousand innocent civilians in a 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja. Nobody knew what Saddam had done with his biological and chemical stockpiles, especially after he booted inspectors out of the country. But after reviewing the information, virtually every major intelligence agency in the world had reached the same conclusion: Saddam had WMD in his arsenal and the capacity to produce more. One intelligence report summarized the problem: “Since the end of inspections in 1998, Saddam has maintained the chemical weapons effort, energized the missile program, made a bigger investment in biological weapons, and has begun to try to move forward in the nuclear area.”
Elie is a sober and gentle man. But there was passion in his 74-yr-old eyes when he compared Saddam Hussein’s brutality to the Nazi genocide. “Mr. President, you have a moral obligation to act against evil.” The force of his conviction affected me deeply. Here was a man who had devoted his life to peace urging me to intervene in Iraq. As he later explained in an op-ed: “Though I oppose war, I am in favor of intervention when, as in this case because of Hussein’s equivocations and procrastinations, no other option remains.”
“Dealing with Iraq would show a major commitment to anti-terrorism,” Don Rumsfeld said.
If anything, the consequences of defeat in Iraq would be even worse than in Vietnam. We would leave al Qaeda with a safe haven in a country with vast oil reserves. We would embolden a hostile Iran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. We would shatter the hopes of people taking risks for freedom across the Middle East.
Iraq and WMD
Years of intelligence pointed overwhelmingly to the conclusion that Saddam had WMD. He had used them in the past. He had not met his responsibility to prove their destruction. He had refused to cooperate with the inspectors, even with the threat of an invasion on his doorstep. The only logical conclusion was that he was hiding WMD.
Members of the previous administration, John Kerry, John Edwards, and the vast majority of Congress had all read the same intelligence that I had and concluded Iraq had WMD. So had intelligence agencies around the world. Nobody was lying. We were all wrong. The absence of WMD stockpiles did not change the fact that Saddam was a threat.
At one point, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz suggested that we consider confronting Iraq as well as the Taliban. Before 9/11, Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship was widely considered the most dangerous country in the world. The regime had a long record of supporting terrorism, including paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Saddam’s forces fired routinely at American and British pilots patrolling the no-fly zones imposed by the United Nations. And Iraq had defied more than a decade’s worth of UN resolutions demanding that it prove it had destroyed its WMD.
I have concluded that we made two errors that account for many of the setbacks we faced. The first is that we did not respond more quickly or aggressively when the security situation started to deteriorate after Saddam’s regime fell. In the ten months following the invasion, we cut troop levels from 192,000 to 109,000. Many of the remaining troops focused on training the Iraqi army and police, not protecting the Iraqi people. We worried we would create resentment by looking like occupiers. We believed we could train Iraqi security forces to lead the fight. And we thought progress toward a representative democracy, giving Iraqis of all backgrounds a stake in their country, was the best path to lasting security. While there was logic behind these assumptions, the Iraqi people’s desire for security trumped their aversion to occupation. One of the ironies of the war is that we were criticized harshly by the left and some in the international community for wanting to build an empire in Iraq. We never sought that. In fact, we were so averse to anything that looked like an empire that we made our job far more difficult. By reducing our troop presence and focusing on training Iraqis, we inadvertently allowed the insurgency to gain momentum. Then al Qaeda fighters flocked to Iraq seeking a new safe haven, which made our mission both more difficult and more important. Cutting troop levels too quickly was the most important failure of execution in the war. Ultimately, we adapted our strategy and fixed the problems, despite almost universal pressure to abandon Iraq. It took four painful, costly years to do so. At the time, progress felt excruciatingly slow. But history’s perspective is broader. The other error was the intelligence failure on Iraq’s WMD. Almost a decade later, it is hard to describe how widespread an assumption it was that Saddam had WMD. Supporters of the war believed it; opponents of the war believed it; even members of Saddam’s own regime believed it. We all knew that intelligence is never 100% certain; that’s the nature of the business. But I believed that the intelligence on Iraq’s WMD was solid. If Saddam didn’t have WMD, why wouldn’t he just prove it to the inspectors? Every psychological profile I had read told me Saddam was a survivor. If he cared so much about staying in power, why would he gamble his regime by pretending to have WMD? He told agents that he was more worried about looking weak to Iran than being removed by the coalition. He never thought the United States would follow through on our promises to disarm him by force.
While the world was undoubtedly safer with Saddam gone, the reality was that I had sent American troops into combat based in large part on intelligence that proved false. That was a massive blow to our credibility—my credibility—that would shake the confidence of the American people.
Whenever I heard someone claim that we had rushed to war, I thought back to this period. It had been more than a decade since the Gulf War resolutions had demanded that Saddam disarm, over four years since he had kicked out the weapons inspectors, six months since I had issued my ultimatum at the UN, four months since Resolution 1441 had given Saddam his “final opportunity,” and three months past the deadline to fully disclose his WMD. Diplomacy did not feel rushed. It felt like it was taking forever.
I’m not sure what more I could have done to show Saddam I meant what I said. I named him part of an axis of evil in my State of the Union address. I spoke to a packed chamber of the United Nations and promised to disarm him by force if diplomacy failed. We presented him with a unanimous Security Council resolution. We sought and received strong bipartisan backing from the U.S. Congress. We deployed 150,000 troops to his border. I gave him a final forty-eight-hours’ notice that we were about to invade his country. How much clearer could I have been? We had rallied an international coalition to pressure him to come clean about his weapons of mass destruction programs. We had obtained a unanimous United Nations Security Council resolution making clear there would be serious consequences for continued defiance. We had reached out to Arab nations about taking Saddam into exile. I had given Saddam and his sons a final 48 hours to avoid war. The dictator rejected every opportunity. The only logical conclusion was that he had something to hide, something so important that he was willing to go to war for it.
8 Nov, 2002: UNSCR 1441 is unanimously (15-0) adopted by the UN (even France, Russia, China, and Syria voted in favor). The world was now on record: Saddam had a “final opportunity to comply” with his obligation to disclose and disarm. If he did not, he would face “serious consequences.” Iraq had thirty days to submit a “currently accurate, full, and complete declaration” of all WMD-related programs. The resolution made clear the burden of proof rested with Saddam. The inspectors did not have to prove that he had weapons. He had to prove that he did not.
Many of those who demonstrated against military action in Iraq were devoted advocates of human rights. Yet they condemned me for using force to remove the man who had gassed the Kurds, mowed down the Shia by helicopter gunship, massacred the Marsh Arabs, and sent tens of thousands to mass graves. I understood why people might disagree on the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the United States. But I didn’t see how anyone could deny that liberating Iraq advanced the cause of human rights.
We developed plans for long-term reconstruction. We focused on ten areas: education, health, water and sanitation, electricity, shelter, transportation, governance and rule of law, agriculture, communications, and economic policy. For each, we gathered data, formulated a strategy, and set precise goals. For example, USAID determined that Iraq had 250 nonmilitary general hospitals, 20 military hospitals, 5 medical college hospitals, and 995 civilian medical care centers. Our plan called for surging medical supplies into the country, working to recruit Iraqi doctors and nurses living abroad to return home, training new medical personnel, and, ultimately, handing control to a new Iraqi health ministry.
Patriot Act
1978: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is passed by the USG (before the widespread use of cell phones and internet) prohibiting the NSA from monitoring communications involving people inside the United States without a warrant from the FISA court. For example, if a terrorist in Afghanistan contacted a terrorist in Pakistan, NSA could intercept their conversation. But if the same terrorist called someone in the USA, or sent an email that touched an American computer server, NSA had to apply for a court order.
I asked the White House counsel’s office and the Justice Department to study whether I could authorize the NSA to monitor al Qaeda communications into and out of the country without FISA warrants. Both told me I could. They concluded that conducting surveillance against our enemies in war fell within the authorities granted by the congressional war resolution and the constitutional authority of the commander in chief. Abraham Lincoln had wiretapped telegraph machines during the Civil War. Woodrow Wilson had ordered the interception of virtually every telephone and telegraph message going into or out of the United States during World War I. Franklin Roosevelt had allowed the military to read and censor communications during World War II.
The NSA had the capability to monitor those al Qaeda phone calls into the United States before 9/11. But he didn’t have the legal authority to do it without receiving a court order, a process that could be difficult and slow.
The Wall: A major gap in US counterterrorism capabilities, over time, the USG had adopted a set of procedures that prevented law enforcement and intelligence personnel from sharing key information.
“How can we possibly assure our citizens we are protecting them if our own people can’t even talk to each other?” I said in one meeting shortly after the attacks. “We’ve got to fix the problem.” Attorney General John Ashcroft took the lead in writing a legislative proposal. The result was the USA PATRIOT Act. The bill eliminated the wall and allowed law enforcement and intelligence personnel to share information. It modernized our counterterrorism capabilities by giving investigators access to tools like roving wiretaps, which allowed them to track suspects who changed cell phone numbers—an authority that had long been used to catch drug traffickers and mob bosses. It authorized aggressive financial measures to freeze terrorist assets. And it included judicial and congressional oversight to protect civil liberties.
26 Oct, 2001: The Patriot Act aka "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001" is signed into law (Senate: 98-1, House: 357-66) authorizing the USG to use surveillance technologies in order to prevent future terror attacks.
One provision created a little discomfort at home. The PATRIOT Act allowed the government to seek warrants to examine the business records of suspected terrorists, such as credit card receipts, apartment leases, and library records.
Terrorist Surveillance Program
The purpose of the program was to monitor so-called dirty numbers, which intelligence professionals had reason to believe belonged to al Qaeda operatives. Many had been found in the cell phones or computers of terrorists captured on the battlefield. If we inadvertently intercepted any portion of purely domestic communications, the violation would be reported to the Justice Department for investigation.
I gave the order to proceed with the program. We considered going to Congress to get legislation, but key members from both parties who received highly classified briefings on the program agreed that the surveillance was necessary and that a legislative debate was not possible without exposing our methods to the enemy.
Guantanamo Bay
The Shoe Bomber & GITMO: The near-miss over the Atlantic highlighted a broader gap in our approach to the war on terror. When Richard Reid was arrested, he was swiftly placed into the U.S. criminal justice system, which entitled him to the same constitutional protections as a common criminal. But the shoe bomber was not a burglar or bank robber; he was a foot soldier in al Qaeda’s war against America. He had emailed his mother two days before his attempted attack: “What I am doing is part of the ongoing war between Islam and disbelief.” By giving this terrorist the right to remain silent, we deprived ourselves of the opportunity to collect vital intelligence on his plan and his handlers. Reid’s case made clear we needed a new policy for dealing with captured terrorists. In this new kind of war, there is no more valuable source of intelligence on potential attacks than the terrorists themselves. Amid the steady stream of threats after 9/11, I grappled with three of the most critical decisions I would make in the war on terror: where to hold captured enemy fighters, how to determine their legal status and ensure they eventually faced justice, and how to learn what they knew about future attacks so we could protect the American people. Initially, most captured al Qaeda fighters were held for questioning in battlefield prisons in Afghanistan. In November, CIA officers went to interrogate Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners detained at a primitive nineteenth-century Afghan fortress, Qala-i-Jangi. A riot ensued. Using weapons smuggled onto the complex, enemy fighters killed one of our officers, Johnny “Mike” Spann, making him the first American combat death in the war. The tragedy highlighted the need for a secure facility to hold captured terrorists. There were few options, none particularly attractive. For a while, we held al Qaeda detainees on Navy ships in the Arabian Sea. But that was not a viable long-term solution. Another possibility was to send the terrorists to a secure base on a distant island or U.S. territory, such as Guam. But holding captured terrorists on American soil could activate constitutional protections they would not otherwise receive, such as the right to remain silent. That would make it much more difficult to get urgently needed intelligence. We decided to hold detainees at a remote naval station on the southern tip of Cuba, Guantanamo Bay. The base was on Cuban soil, but the United States controlled it under a lease acquired after the Spanish-American War. The Justice Department advised me that prisoners brought there had no right of access to the U.S. criminal justice system. The area surrounding Guantanamo was inaccessible and sparsely populated. Holding terrorists in Fidel Castro’s Cuba was hardly an appealing prospect. But as Don Rumsfeld put it, Guantanamo was the “least worst choice” available. At Guantanamo, detainees were given clean and safe shelter, three meals a day, a personal copy of the Koran, the opportunity to pray five times daily, and the same medical care their guards received. They had access to exercise space and a library stocked with books and DVDs. One of the most popular was an Arabic translation of Harry Potter.
A Belgian official inspected Guantanamo five times and called it a “model prison” that offered detainees better treatment than Belgian prisons. “I have never witnessed acts of violence or things which shocked me in Guantanamo,” he said. “One should not confuse this center with Abu Ghraib.”
Detainees were entitled to the presumption of innocence, representation by a qualified attorney, and the right to present evidence that would have probative value to a reasonable person.
Convicting a defendant required agreement of two thirds of the tribunal. The detainee could appeal the tribunal’s decision or sentence to the secretary of defense and to the president.
While I believe opening Guantanamo after 9/11 was necessary, the detention facility had become a propaganda tool for our enemies and a distraction for our allies. I worked to find a way to close the prison without compromising security. By the time I left office, the number of detainees at Guantanamo had dropped from nearly 800 to fewer than 250.
Torture
Zubaydah had been severely wounded in a gun battle prior to his arrest. The CIA flew in a top doctor, who saved his life. The Pakistanis then turned him over to our custody. The FBI began questioning Zubaydah, who had clearly been trained on how to resist interrogation. He revealed bits and pieces of information that he thought we already knew. Frighteningly, we didn’t know much. For example, we received definitive information about a new alias for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who Zubaydah also confirmed had masterminded the 9/11 attacks. Then Zubaydah stopped answering questions. George Tenet told me interrogators believed Zubaydah had more information to reveal. If he was hiding something more, what could it be? Zubaydah was our best lead to avoid another catastrophic attack. “We need to find out what he knows,” I directed the team. “What are our options?” One option was for the CIA to take over Zubaydah questioning and move him to a secure location in another country where the Agency could have total control over his environment. CIA experts drew up a list of interrogation techniques that differed from those Zubaydah had successfully resisted. George assured me all interrogations would be performed by experienced intelligence professionals who had undergone extensive training. Medical personnel would be on-site to guarantee that the detainee was not physically or mentally harmed. At my direction, Department of Justice and CIA lawyers conducted a careful legal review. They concluded that the enhanced interrogation program complied with the Constitution and all applicable laws, including those that ban torture. I took a look at the list of techniques. There were two that I felt went too far, even if they were legal. I directed the CIA not to use them. Another technique was waterboarding, a process of simulated drowning. No doubt the procedure was tough, but medical experts assured the CIA that it did no lasting harm. I knew that an interrogation program this sensitive and controversial would one day become public. When it did, we would open ourselves up to criticism that America had compromised our moral values. I would have preferred that we get the information another way. But the choice between security and values was real. Had I not authorized waterboarding on senior al Qaeda leaders, I would have had to accept a greater risk that the country would be attacked. In the wake of 9/11, that was a risk I was unwilling to take. My most solemn responsibility as president was to protect the country. I approved the use of the interrogation techniques. The new techniques proved highly effective. Zubaydah revealed large amounts of information on al Qaeda’s structure and operations. He also provided leads that helped reveal the location of Ramzi bin al Shibh, the logistical planner of the 9/11 attacks. The Pakistani police picked him up on the first anniversary of 9/11. Zubaydah later explained to interrogators why he started answering questions again. His understanding of Islam was that he had to resist interrogation only up to a certain point. Waterboarding was the technique that allowed him to reach that threshold, fulfill his religious duty, and then cooperate. “You must do this for all the brothers,” he said.
George Tenet asked if he had permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I thought about my meeting with Danny Pearl’s widow, who was pregnant with his son when he was murdered. I thought about the 2,973 people stolen from their families by al Qaeda on 9/11. And I thought about my duty to protect the country from another act of terror. “Damn right,” I said. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed proved difficult to break. But when he did, he gave us a lot. He disclosed plans to attack American targets with anthrax and directed us to three people involved in the al Qaeda biological weapons program. He provided information that led to the capture of Hambali, the chief of al Qaeda’s most dangerous affiliate in Southeast Asia and the architect of the Bali terrorist attack that killed 202 people. He provided further details that led agents to Hambali brother, who had been grooming operatives to carry out another attack inside the United States, possibly a West Coast version of 9/11 in which terrorists flew a hijacked plane into the Library Tower in Los Angeles.
Of the thousands of terrorists we captured in the years after 9/11, about a hundred were placed into the CIA program. About a third of those were questioned using enhanced techniques. Three were waterboarded. The information the detainees in the CIA program revealed constituted more than half of what the CIA knew about al Qaeda. Their interrogations helped break up plots to attack American military and diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States. Experts in the intelligence community told me that without the CIA program, there would have been another attack on the United States.
I had asked the most senior legal officers in the U.S. government to review the interrogation methods, and they had assured me they did not constitute torture.
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Misc Quotes
“Over time, petty insults and name-calling harden into conventional wisdom.”-George W. Bush.
“Textbook counterinsurgency. To defeat the enemy, win over the people.”-George W. Bush.
“The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”-George W. Bush.
“The purpose of Geneva was to provide incentives for nation-states to fight wars by an agreed set of rules that protect human dignity and innocent life—and to punish warriors who do not.”-George W. Bush.
“The costs of action must be weighed against the price of inaction.”-George W. Bush.
“History shows that, when given the chance, people of every race and religion take extraordinary risks for liberty.”-George W. Bush.
“This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger.”-George W. Bush.
“The clash between freedom and tyranny is an issue which can only be tried by war, and decided by victory. The war on terror would be the same.”-George W. Bush.
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Chronology
17 Oct, 2014: Operation Inherent Resolve begins targeting ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
3 Oct, 2008: The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is signed into US law (Senate: 74-25, House: 263-171); with $700 billion to strengthen the banks and unfreeze the credit markets. Purchasing equity would inject capital—the lifeblood of finance—directly into the undercapitalized banking system. That would reduce the risk of sudden failure and free up more money for banks to lend.-Decision Points by Bush.
15 Sep, 2008: Housing Market Collapse; Lehamn Borthers, the 158-year-old investment house, files for bankruptcy. The Dow Jones plunged 500 points. A panic mentality set in. Investors started selling off securities and buying Treasury bills and gold. Clients pulled their accounts from investment banks. The credit markets tightened as lenders held onto their cash. AIG, with more than $85 billion in mortgage-backed securities was on the brink of collapse. The USG made a deal with AIG and the NY FED loaned them $85 billion.-Decision Points by Bush.
10 Sep, 2008: Lehman Brothers announces its worst-ever financial loss, $3.9 billion in a single quarter. Confidence in Lehman vanished. Short-sellers, traders seeking to profit from declining stock prices, had helped drive Lehman stock from $16.20 to $3.65 per share. There was no way the firm could survive the weekend.-Decision Points by Bush.
Mid-2007: US home values declined for the first time in 13 years. Homeowners defaulted on their mortgages in increasing numbers, and financial companies wrote down billions of dollars in mortgage-related assets.-Decision Points by Bush.
2006: The Military Commissions Act is passed by the USG by a bipartisan majority. It contained authority for military tribunals and enhanced interrogation techniques.-Decision Points by Bush.
23-31 Aug, 2005: Hurricane Katrina, a Cat V Hurricane with winds measured at 280 km/h, strikes the US Gulf Coast killing 1833, destroying 300,000 homes, and causing $125 billion (2005 USD) in damage.
19 Dec, 2003: Libyan Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, a longtime enemy of the USA and state sponsor of terror, publicly confesses that he has been developing chemical and nuclear weapons. He pledged to dismantle his WMD programs, along with related missiles, under a system of strict international verification.- Decision Points by George W. Bush.
19 Mar, 2003- 18 Dec, 2011: The Iraq War (GWOT-Iraq) is fought by a US led international coalition.
Aug, 2010- 18 Dec, 2011: Operation New Dawn; an umbrella term for combat operations in Iraq.
19 Mar, 2003- 31 Aug, 2010: Operation Iraqi Freedom; invasion of Iraq to defeat state sponsored/harbored terrorist groups.
22 Feb, 2006: Two massive bombs destroy the Askariya shrine at the Golden Mosque of Samarra. Considered one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, it contains the tombs of two revered imams who were father and grandfather to the hidden imam, a savior the Shia believe will restore justice to humanity.-Decision Points by George W. Bush.
Jan, 2004: US troops intercept a letter from Zarqawi to senior al Qaeda leaders; He wrote about the growing pressure he was feeling and laid out his plan for survival. “We need to bring the Shia into the battle,” he wrote, “because it is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us.” He set a new goal for the jihadists in Iraq—igniting “a sectarian war.”- Decision Points by George W. Bush.
13 Dec, 2003: Saddam Hussein is Captured by US Forces during Operation Red Dawn in the town of ad-Dawr, Iraq.
Jan, 2003: US Presidential Directive NSPD 24 is signed into law creating a new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.- Decision Points by Bush.
8 Nov, 2002: UNSCR 1441 is unanimously (15-0) adopted by the UN (even France, Russia, China, and Syria voted in favor). The world was now on record: Saddam had a “final opportunity to comply” with his obligation to disclose and disarm. If he did not, he would face “serious consequences.” Iraq had 30 days to submit a “currently accurate, full, and complete declaration” of all WMD-related programs. The resolution made clear the burden of proof rested with Saddam. The inspectors did not have to prove that he had weapons. He had to prove that he did not.-Decision Points by Bush.
Summer, 2002: US Intel learns that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an al Qaeda–affiliated terrorist who had experimented with biological weapons in Afghanistan, was operating a lab in NE Iraq. “Suspect facility in this area may be producing poisons and toxins for terrorist use,” the briefing read. “Al-Zarqawi is an active terrorist planner who has targeted U.S. and Israeli interests: Sensitive reporting from a [classified] service indicates that al-Zarqawi has been directing efforts to smuggle an unspecified chemical material originating in northern Iraq into the United States.”-Decision Points by Bush.
11 Oct, 2002: The Iraq War Resolution is passed by the US Congress (Senate: 77-23, House: 296-133).
2-24 Oct, 2002: The Beltway Sniper attacks begin with five shootings taking place in Montgomery, MD and after having killed 10 and wounding 3, culminates in the arrest of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo.
24 May, 2002: The Moscow Treaty is signed by the USA & Russia as a Strategic Offensive Reduction in which both nations pledged to shrink their number of deployed warheads from 6,600 weapons to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012.-Decision Points by George W. Bush.
Jan, 2002: The Israeli navy intercept a ship called the Karine A in the Red Sea. Aboard was an arsenal of deadly weapons. The Israelis believed the ship was headed from Iran to the Palestinian city of Gaza. Arafat sent a letter pleading his innocence.-Decision Points by George W. Bush.
26 Oct, 2001: The Patriot Act aka "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001" is signed into law (Senate: 98-1, House: 357-66) authorizing the USG to use surveillance technologies in order to prevent future terror attacks.
7 Oct, 2001- 31 Dec, 2014: Operation Enduring Freedom (GWOT-Afghanistan) is fought by a US led coalition against the Taliban and various state sponsored/harbored terrorist groups.
13 Nov, 2001: US President Bush signs an executive order establishing military tribunals to try captured terrorists.
22 Sep, 2001: Bush calls Putin from Camp David. In a long Saturday-morning conversation, he agreed to open Russian airspace to American military planes and use his influence with the former Soviet republics to help get our troops into Afghanistan.- Decision Points by George W. Bush.
14 Sep, 2001: US Congress authorizes the president to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons determined to have planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 9-11 terrorist attacks, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the US (Senate: 98-0, House: 420-1).-Decision Points by Bush.
13 Sep, 2001: Colin Powell calls President Musharraf and made clear he had to decide whose side he was on. He presented a list of nonnegotiable demands, including condemning the 9/11 attacks, denying al Qaeda safe haven in Pakistan, sharing intelligence, granting us overflight rights, and breaking diplomatic relations with the Taliban.-Decision Points by Bush.
18 Sept- 12 Oct, 2001: Anthrax Attacks in the USA kill five and infect 17 others.
6 Aug, 2008: Ivins is declared by the FBI as the sole culprit of the 2001 Anthrax Attacks.
12 Sep, 2001: For the first time in NATO’s fifty-two-year history, the members of the alliance voted to invoke Article 5 of the charter: An attack on one is an attack on all.
11 Sep, 2001: 9-11; Al Qaeda hijacks 4 commercial air flights and crashes them into the World Trade Centers (WTC) and the Pentagon, while a 4th flight is crash landed in a field in PA.
2001: US Congress passes No Child Left Behind (NCLB) by a bipartisan landslide.
1999: Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932, which prohibited commercial banks from engaging in the investment business.
1999: Pakistani General Pervez Musharraf overthrows the democratically elected government of Pakistan in a coup.
16-19 Dec, 1998: US & UK Operation Desert Fox is launched in Iraq to degrade potential WMD sites.
At first, Saddam claimed he had only a limited stockpile of chemical weapons and Scud missiles. Over time, UN inspectors discovered a vast, haunting arsenal. Saddam had filled thousands of bombs, shells, and warheads with chemical agents. He had a nuclear weapons program that was about two years from yielding a bomb, much closer than the CIA’s prewar estimate of eight to ten years. When his son-in-law defected in 1995, Saddam acknowledged that the regime had been hiding a biological weapons program that included anthrax and botulinum toxin. To keep Saddam in check, the UN imposed strict economic sanctions. But as outrage over Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait faded, the world’s attention drifted. Saddam diverted nearly two billion dollars from the Oil-for-Food program—which the UN had created to provide for the basic humanitarian needs of innocent Iraqis—to enrich his cronies and reconstitute his military strength, including programs related to weapons of mass destruction. As children starved, he launched a propaganda campaign blaming sanctions for the suffering. By 1998 Saddam had persuaded key trading partners like Russia and France to lobby the UN to loosen the restrictions. Then he forced the UN weapons inspectors to leave the country. The problem was clear: Saddam had never verified that he had destroyed all of his weapons from the Gulf War. With the inspectors gone, the world was blind to whether he had restarted his programs.-Decision Points by Bush.
1998: Pakistan conducts a secret nuclear test, incurring further sanctions.
1998: A researcher at the University of Wisconsin isolated an individual embryonic stem cell for the first time. As the cell divided, it created a multitude of other cells—called a line—that could be used for research. Soon after, the Clinton administration adopted a novel interpretation of the Dickey Amendment. Lawyers argued that taxpayer dollars could be used to support stem cell research on lines derived from destroyed embryos so long as the destruction itself was funded by private sources.-Decision Points by George W. Bush.
1996: The Khobar Towers Bombing in Saudi Arabia is perpetrated by Hezbollah.
1995: US Congress passes the Dickey Amendment, banning the use of federal funds for research in which human embryos were destroyed.
1994: A Jewish Community Center (JCC) in Argentina is attacked by Hezbollah.
1992: A Jewish Community Center (JCC) in Argentina is attacked by Hezbollah.
2 Aug, 1990- 28 Feb, 1991: The Gulf War in Iraq; A US Led International Coalition defeats Iraq in response to their invasion of Kuwait. As a condition for ending hostilities, the UN passes UNSCR 687 requiring Saddam to destroy his WMD, stop WMD programs, and destroy missiles with a range of more than 90 miles. To ensure compliance, Saddam was required to submit to a UN monitoring and verification system.
17 Jan-28 Feb, 1991: Operation Desert Storm commanded by Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf kicks off with a 42-day aerial bombardment and drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait in fewer than 100 hours; 149 Americans were KIA.
14 Jan, 1991: The USG authorizes the use of force in the Persian Gulf.
2-4 Aug, 1990: Iraq Invades Kuwait and occupies the country for seven months.
1985: Hezbollah hijacks a TWA Flight and murders a US Navy Diver aboard.
1983: The Marine Barracks Bombing in Beirut, Lebanon is perpetrated by Hezbollah.
1978: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is passed by the USG (before the widespread use of cell phones and internet) prohibiting the NSA from monitoring communications involving people inside the United States without a warrant from the FISA court. For example, if a terrorist in Afghanistan contacted a terrorist in Pakistan, NSA could intercept their conversation. But if the same terrorist called someone in the United States, or sent an email that touched an American computer server, NSA had to apply for a court order.-Decision Points by Bush.
1947: The National Security Act of 1947 is passed creating the CIA, the National Security Council (NSC), the Defense Department (DOD), and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) with heads of each service branch, plus a chairman and vice-chairman. The chiefs are not part of the chain of command, so they have no direct responsibility for military operations. A key part of their role is to advocate the health and strength of our armed forces. By law, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is the president’s principal military adviser.-Decision Points by Bush.
19 Feb, 1942: FDR issues Executive Order 9066 ordering the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII.
1878: The USA passes the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibiting active-duty military from conducting law enforcement within the USA.
1873: US Congress passes the Comstock Law prohibiting access to contraceptive information on grounds of obscenity.
27 Apr, 1861: US Pres. Lincoln suspends Habeas Corpus granting military authorities the necessary power to silence dissenters and rebels. Under the order, commanders could arrest and detain individuals who were deemed threatening to military operations.
1798: US Pres. Adams signs the Alien and Sedition Acts, banning public dissent.
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