| December 11, 2006 | - Moses Hardy, who at 113 was the second oldest man in the world and the last surviving black U.S. veteran of World War I, died in Mississippi.
| Source:
local6.com
|
| December 10, 2006 | - Police and firefighters on Long Island rescued a veteran who had walled himself in with a seven-foot-high pile of fecal matter and other debris.
| Source:
NYPost
|
| November 19, 2006 | -
Democratic
Representative Charles Rangel called for the reinstatement of the draft.
| Source:
Boston.com
|
| October 8, 2006 | - Researchers found that Human-Elephant Conflict, or H.E.C., was on the rise. “Where for centuries humans and elephants lived in relative peaceful coexistence,” said professor Gay Bradshaw of Oregon State University, “there is now hostility and violence.” Bradshaw hypothesized that elephants are suffering from species-wide chronic stress brought on by poaching, habitat loss, and other traumas, which may explain why young male elephants have been observed raping and killing rhinoceroses.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| September 1, 2006 | - U.S. Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld quoted Georges Clemenceau, who said, “War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 28, 2006 | - The mayor of Beirut said war with Israel was bad for the environment.
| Source:
Globe and Mail
|
| July 16, 2006 | - Newt Gingrich called on President Bush to admit that the United States is now involved in World War III.
| Source:
The Seattle Times
|
| June 25, 2006 | - Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of Iraq unveiled a 24-point national reconciliation plan designed to end his nation's civil war, and in Baghdad nearly 100 people were abducted by gunmen dressed as police officers.
| Source:
Islam Online via Google News
|
| April 23, 2006 | - The recently-completed “campaign plan for the global war on terrorism” was approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The new plan calls for “special mission units” to be engaged in continuous warfare around the world; such groups will be permitted to invade a country without the approval of the country's U.S. ambassador.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| April 16, 2006 | -
Peace activist William Sloane Coffin died.
| Source:
The Seattle Times
|
| April 9, 2006 | - The U.S. military announced that 1,313 Iraqi civilians had been killed in the sectarian violence of March. "Civil war," said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, "has almost started among Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, and those who are coming from Asia."
| Source 1:
BBC News
Source 2:
Chron.com
|
| March 21, 2006 | - President George W. Bush denied that Iraq was in the midst of a civil war, although when asked about the possibility of a full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq he said: "That will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq."
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 19, 2006 | - "We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more," said Iyad Allawi, the former interim prime minister of Iraq. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 17, 2006 | - The United States launched Operation Swarmer against the Iraqi insurgency. While the operation was described as the largest air assault since the beginning of the Iraq war, there were no airstrikes and no leading insurgents were captured.
| Source:
Time
|
| March 14, 2006 | -
Donald Rumsfeld denied that Iraq was in a civil war.
| Source:
CNN
|
| February 24, 2006 | - At least 140 people were killed in Iraq during fighting that broke out after the Al Askari mosque, a Shiite
shrine in Samarra, was bombed. Sunni leaders said that 184 mosques had been attacked in the fighting, and a daytime curfew was in effect in Baghdad. "If there is a civil war in this country," said Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi, "it will never end."
| Source 1:
Democracy Now!
Source 2:
Reuters
|
| February 6, 2006 | - The Bush Administration submitted a $2.77 trillion budget to Congress calling for a 7 percent increase in Pentagon spending and a $36 billion cut to the growth of Medicare spending. The Administration is expected to ask for an additional $120 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| February 3, 2006 | -
Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech to the National Press Club and said that "counter-surveillance" of U.S. civilians is a "perfectly understandable thing." "In short," he explained, "it's no big deal." During the speech, Rumsfeld was heckled by activist Heather Hurwitz. "You are torturing people," yelled Hurwitz. "You are a war criminal." "Well," said Rumsfeld, "we'll count her as undecided."
| Source 1:
News.com.au
Source 2:
Democracy Now
|
| December 15, 2005 | - Leaked Pentagon documents showed that the U.S. military was routinely collecting intelligence on antiwar groups and putting it into a database. The Pentagon also launched 1-800-CALL-SPY, a hotline that allows U.S. citizens to report suspicious activity directly to the military.
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| November 24, 2005 | - Former Canadian Minister of Defense Paul Hellyer called on Canadian Parliament to hold hearings on the best way to deal with extraterrestrials. “I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war,” said Hellyer, “that I just think I had to say something.”
| Source:
PRWeb
|
| August 24, 2005 | -
Donald Rumsfeld compared the supporters of the anti-war movement to the supporters of Joseph Stalin.
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| July 28, 2005 | - The Boy Scout National Jamboree was held at Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia. The Senate passed the Support Our Scouts Act of 2005, guaranteeing the Boy Scouts the right to use federal land whether the organization discriminates against atheists and gays or not. The Senate also noted that holding the Jamboree on a military base gave U.S. soldiers the opportunity to practice the “preparation, logistics, and leadership” needed in combat. At the Jamboree four scout leaders were electrocuted while setting up a tent, and three hundred people were treated for heat-related symptoms. In California, a scoutmaster and a thirteen-year-old scout were killed by lightning.
| Source 1:
CNN.com
Source 2:
SWNebr.net
Source 3:
WBOC16
Source 4:
Thomas.loc.gov
|
| June 7, 2005 | - A study showed that the world military budget was about $1,035,000,000,000 in 2004; the United States accounted for nearly half of that.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| May 1, 2005 | - A secret British memo from July 2002, summarizing a meeting between Tony Blair and his security advisors, was made public. The memo implied that President Bush had already made up his mind to go to war in Iraq, despite his claims to the contrary, and that intelligence and facts about Iraq would be “fixed around the policy.”
| Source:
Common Dreams
|
| January 30, 2005 | - Iraqi insurgents, who had been promising death to anyone who came within five hundred yards of a polling station,
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| January 27, 2005 | - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist declared that biological warfare is "the greatest existential threat we face today."
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 24, 2005 | - The Iraqi government arrested an ally of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who was responsible for more than thirty car bombs since the invasion.
| Source:
BBC
|
| January 23, 2005 | - Al-Zarqawi released a tape declaring war on anyone participating in the election and noting that democracy is a "big American lie" incompatible with the rule of God because it allows adherents to choose their religion. He worried about the lost honor of the Iraqis: "Have you accepted oppression of the crusader harlots and the rejectionist pigs?"
| Source:
CNN
|
| January 21, 2005 | -
George W. Bush was sworn in again as president, and threatened to bring "the untamed fire of freedom" to the world. In his 20-minute speech the president used the words "free," "freedom," and "liberty" 49 times, but never said "war" or "Iraq."
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| January 18, 2005 | - Car bombers, suicide attackers, and kidnappers in Iraq were exceptionally busy, killing dozens to protest the country's impending election,
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 9, 2005 | - Political leaders in Sudan signed a peace deal that did not include Darfur.
| Source:
News.com.au
|
| January 6, 2005 | - then announced he would pursue peace talks with it.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 6, 2005 | - Nearly 25 percent of Iraq will not be secure for the election, according to one U.S. military commander, who still insisted the poll date should not be changed. "I think there is a greater chance of civil war with a delay than without one," he said.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| January 6, 2005 | - The Iraqi government extended a state of emergency for the country for another 30 days.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| January 1, 2005 | -
Fighting resumed the next day.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| December 19, 2004 | - and car bombs killed more than 60 people in Najaf and Karbala.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 17, 2004 | - and the National Guard was offering a $15,000 enlistment bonus.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 8, 2004 | - Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked at a pep talk in Kuwait, "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?" Rumsfeld mused, "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have." Besides, he noted, "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can still be blown up."
| Source:
AP
|
| November 30, 2004 | - One hundred thirty-five American soldiers died in Iraq in November, tying last April as the deadliest month for U.S. forces during the war.
| Source:
CNN
|
| November 8, 2004 | - The United States invaded Falluja for the second time in six months and conquered the city's general hospital. Patients and doctors were tied up and an Iraqi soldier shot himself in the leg.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 30, 2004 | - Congress approved a measure that will permit soldiers and their families to seek reimbursement for combat equipment, such as body armor, that they have purchased with their own money.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 25, 2004 | - Fifty new Iraqi soldiers were ambushed and killed near Mandali.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 24, 2004 | - The interim Iraqi government officially notified the International Atomic Energy Agency that 380 tons of extremely powerful HMX and RDX explosives that American forces simply failed to secure have disappeared from a former military facility called Al Qaqaa. The explosives can be used to destroy buildings, arm missile warheads, and detonate nuclear devices, and it was generally conceded that the Al Qaqaa cache, which was under seal by the IAEA prior to the U.S. invasion, is the most likely source of the explosives used in the extremely effective roadside and suicide bombs that have been the primary weapon of the Iraqi insurgency. The Department of Defense has known about the loss of the explosives for more than a year.
| Source:
The Nelson Report
|
| October 22, 2004 | - U.S. officials said that the Iraqi insurgency is at least twice as large as previously estimated and that it has "unlimited money."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 10, 2004 | - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq and told soldiers that the violence there will probably get worse; while he was in the country two car bombs went off in Baghdad, killing 11 people.
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| September 30, 2004 | -
Iraqi
schoolchildren were still waiting to start school, which has remained closed because of the ongoing civil war.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 26, 2004 | -
Colin Powell said that the Iraqi insurgency is "getting worse," and U.S. forces arrested a high-ranking officer in the Iraqi National Guard, one week after he was appointed commander of the Diyala province, because he supposedly has ties to insurgents.
| Source:
BBC
|
| September 24, 2004 | - An expert panel appointed by the Pentagon concluded that the United States lacks the troops to maintain its current military commitments, and
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 19, 2004 | - President Vladimir Putin of Russia responded to the recent terror attacks there by announcing plans for a radical restructuring of the Russian political system that would end the popular election of regional governors and district representatives in parliament.
| Source:
Lexington Herald-Leader
|
| September 19, 2004 | - The mother of a dead American soldier was taken away in handcuffs after she challenged Laura Bush at a campaign rally.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 18, 2004 | -
Chaos continued to rule Iraq; there were many attacks by insurgents, including several large suicide bombings, hostages were beheaded, and many civilians, including women and children, were killed in American airstrikes.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 16, 2004 | - A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush warned of civil war in Iraq.
| Source:
San Francisco Chronicle
|
| September 8, 2004 | - The World Health Organization reported that suicide kills more people worldwide than murder and war put together.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| September 6, 2004 | - A car bomb killed seven American marines and three Iraqi soldiers near Falluja.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| September 3, 2004 | -
Iraqi insurgents blew up another oil pipeline.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| September 2, 2004 | -
Colin Powell admitted that the Bush Administration misjudged the potential for armed resistance in Iraq.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 31, 2004 | -
President Bush said that the "war on terror" is unwinnable but then quickly changed his mind;
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 31, 2004 | - It was discovered that full-body CT scans expose patients to the same level of radiation that people a few miles from Hiroshima received in World War II, and that the scans increase one's risk of developing cancer.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| August 20, 2004 | -
bombs went off at United Nations voter registration offices in Afghanistan, and
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 16, 2004 | - A 57-year-old partially deaf Texan veteran with skin cancer was called up to report for active duty.
| Source:
The Monitor
|
| August 15, 2004 | - National Guard and reserve troops were losing their civilian jobs in greater numbers.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| August 14, 2004 | - There was heavy fighting in western Afghanistan.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 13, 2004 | - al-Sadr was reportedly wounded in a battle with American forces.
| Source:
CBS
|
| August 11, 2004 | - American warplanes bombed Fallujah.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 9, 2004 | - Moktada al-Sadr defied the new Iraqi government and said he would continue to battle American forces: "the Mahdi Army and I will keep resisting. I will stay in holy Najaf and will never leave. I will stay here until my last drop of blood."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 9, 2004 | - A U.S. helicopter was shot down over Sadr City, Baghdad's Shiite slum.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 28, 2004 | - A Jordanian company said that it would pull out of Iraq after a militant faction called the Group of Death kidnapped two of its employees.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 22, 2004 | -
Iraqi militants continued to abduct foreign workers and threatened to cut off their heads unless their employers leave Iraq. "We have warned all the countries, companies, businessmen, and truck drivers," said one statement given to reporters, "that those who deal with American cowboy occupiers will be targeted by the fires of the mujahedeen."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 22, 2004 | - The Government Accountability Office said that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are running $12.3 billion over budget this year.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 17, 2004 | - A Sunni cleric in Ramadi declared a holy war on American forces.
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| July 14, 2004 | - A large survey by the British Ministry of Health of male Gulf War veterans found that they suffer significant fertility problems.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| July 7, 2004 | - Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen rebel leader, claimed to be able to fight the Russians for another twenty years if necessary, and he threatened to kill the next president of Chechnya. "Whoever occupies this puppet's chair — his days are numbered."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 2, 2004 | - Three days later, insurgents fired rockets from a bus and a pickup truck that hit two central Baghdad hotels, and a mortar attack on a military base near the city's airport wounded eleven U.S. soldiers.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 29, 2004 | - Observing that "a state of war is not a blank check for the president," the Supreme Court ruled that both foreign prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay and so-called enemy combatants held in the United States can use the American legal system to challenge their detention.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 25, 2004 | -
Colin Powell said that declaring martial law in Iraq would make things worse.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 24, 2004 | -
Iraqi insurgents killed more than 100 people in one day in attacks all across the country.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 19, 2004 | -
Saudi militants beheaded an American hostage.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 18, 2004 | - At least 35 Iraqis were killed and 145 were wounded in a suicide car bombing at an army recruiting office in Baghdad; elsewhere six people were killed in another bombing.
| Source:
Chicago Tribune
|
| June 15, 2004 | -
Chaos continued to rule Iraq; a suicide bomber killed at least 13 people when he attacked a convoy of civilian contractors in Baghdad, whereupon a mob descended on the wreckage and set it on fire under the watchful eyes of Iraqi policemen; on the same day other bombs killed eight people.
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| June 6, 2004 | - President George W. Bush traveled to France to attend a ceremony commemorating the D-Day invasion and attempted to play down his dispute with President Jacques Chirac over the invasion of Iraq; Bush told French journalists that he was never angry with the French or with Chirac for his refusal to endorse the war, and he even invited Chirac to visit the ranch down in Crawford, Texas. "If he wants to come and see cows, he's welcome to come out here and see some cows," Bush said, apparently unaware that Chirac, a former agriculture minister, is a cattle expert.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 2, 2004 | -
Blasts from five mortar shells were heard during the ceremony at which the Iraqi interim government was announced, which was not attended by any senior American officials, and a car bomb blew up just outside the "Green Zone."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 26, 2004 | -
The New York Times published an extraordinary editors' note admitting that the newspaper had been manipulated by members of the Bush Administration and by Iraqi exiles such as Ahmad Chalabi into running false stories (especially on the subject of Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction) that advanced the administration's war agenda and had failed to follow up aggressively on many of those stories, and had failed, in those instances when it did follow up, to make prominent note of the fact that the stories were false. The retraction was published on page A10, where many readers would fail to notice it.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 24, 2004 | - General Anthony Zinni, the former commander of all U.S. troops in the Middle East, said that the invasion of Iraq was "the wrong war at the wrong time with the wrong strategy."
| Source:
CBS News
|
| May 24, 2004 | -
Colombian rebels blew up a disco.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| May 17, 2004 | - And it was revealed that in 2002 White House council Alberto Gonzalez wrote a memo arguing that the war on terror "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
| Source:
Newsday
|
| May 14, 2004 | - New documents emerged about the CIA's friendly relationship with a number of former Nazis after World War II.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 13, 2004 | -
Rumsfeld, who this week made a surprise visit to Abu Ghraib prison, compared the Iraq war to the American Civil War and said that "the carnage was horrendous, and it was worth it."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 9, 2004 | - "Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had," said Vice President Dick Cheney. "People ought to let him do his job."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 6, 2004 | - The Pentagon was thinking about setting up a new office to plan postwar operations for future wars.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 30, 2004 | - The United States used F-15E and F-16 warplanes, F-14 and F-18 fighter-bombers, AC-130 gunships, and AH-1W Super Cobra helicopters to bomb Fallujah. British Tornados were also used. Some three dozen laser-guided 500-pound bombs were dropped, and at least one building was blown up by accident.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 23, 2004 | - The Bush Administration continued to insist that sovereignty will be turned over to an Iraqi government on June 30 but revealed for the first time that the sovereign will be unable to make new laws or command the armed forces.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 23, 2004 | - Pictures of American coffins returning from Iraq finally became public after a website received them via a Freedom of Information Act request.
| Source:
The Memory Hole
|
| April 10, 2004 | - Civil war broke out between two groups of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 9, 2004 | -
Administration officials insisted that the widespread uprising in Iraq, which appeared to show a new alliance between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, was not in fact a widespread uprising but rather a few isolated pockets of "thugs, gangs, and terrorists."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 23, 2004 | - Millions of protesters filled streets around the world to mark the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 22, 2004 | - There was heavy fighting in Nepal and the government claimed to have killed hundreds of rebels.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| March 15, 2004 | - Seven American soldiers were killed in Iraq over the weekend; officials said that the Iraqi resistance has begun using more sophisticated tactics.
| Source:
Globe and Mail
|
| March 15, 2004 | - A new study of former child soldiers in Uganda found that 6 percent had seen a family member killed, 2 percent had killed a family member, and 27 percent had been obliged to drink their own urine.
| Source:
Sunday Monitor, Lancet
|
| March 11, 2004 | - The Pentagon was still paying $340,000 a month to the Iraqi National Congress, the exile group that provided much of the discredited intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 2, 2004 | -
China issued a report condemning the United States for its human-rights violations and its "military aggression around the world."
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| March 1, 2004 | - President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled Haiti as a rebel army of thugs and former death-squad members approached Port-au-Prince, which was being terrorized by thugs loyal to the president; President Bush sent in the Marines to prepare for a multinational peacekeeping force.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| February 28, 2004 | - Six U.S. soldiers were killed by roadside bombs in Iraq; two employees of CNN were killed in an ambush.
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| February 26, 2004 | - The British government declined to prosecute Katharine Gun, the linguist who leaked a United States National Security Agency memo asking British intelligence to spy on United Nations diplomats before the invasion of Iraq; there was speculation that the government was trying to avoid another embarrassing debate about the legality of the war.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 23, 2004 | - Ten people died in a suicide attack on an Iraqi police station in Kirkuk.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| February 22, 2004 | - An internal Pentagon report warned that global climate change will soon lead to drought, famine, and widespread warfare as countries begin to fight over scarce water, food, and energy supplies. Climate change, the report argues, "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern."
| Source:
Observer
|
| February 16, 2004 | - One hundred twenty-five people died in various attacks in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 9, 2004 | -
John Kerry noted that "now the president is giving us a new reason for sending people to war. And the problem is not just that he is changing his story now. It is that it appears he was telling the American people stories in 2002."
| Source:
San Jose Mercury News
|
| February 3, 2004 | -
President Bush submitted a $2.4 trillion budget to Congress but failed to include the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The budget, which projects a record $521 billion deficit, calls for big increases in military spending and cuts for programs that help people without much political influence.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 1, 2004 | - Three American soldiers were killed when a homemade bomb destroyed their Humvee, and nine Iraqis died when a suicide attacker drove a car into a police station.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 30, 2004 | -
Somalia's warlords reached yet another peace deal.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 24, 2004 | -
David Kay, the outgoing head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that Iraq got rid of its illegal weapons programs years before the United States invaded.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 20, 2004 | - President George W. Bush made his State of the Union address just one day after the Iowa caucuses and appealed to voters to reelect him so that he could continue to wage war on terror.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| January 18, 2004 | - A U.S. Army study concluded that the tactics of the Iraqi guerrillas are getting more sophisticated; officials said that they feared the guerrillas were studying the flight patterns of American helicopters and other aircraft.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 14, 2004 | - An Apache helicopter was shot down near Habbaniya.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 11, 2004 | - American soldiers killed two Iraqi policemen in Kirkuk.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 9, 2004 | - Former secretary of the treasury Paul O'Neill revealed in a new book that President George W. Bush was already looking for an excuse to invade Iraq during the first few weeks of his presidency. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it," O'Neill said. "The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this.'"
| Source:
CBS News
|
| January 9, 2004 | - Another U.S. helicopter was apparently shot down in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 9, 2004 | - The Taliban were still killing people in Afghanistan.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 8, 2004 | - Thirty-five soldiers were wounded when Iraqi guerrillas shelled a U.S. camp west of Baghdad.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 3, 2004 | - Another U.S. helicopter was shot down in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 2, 2004 | -
Switzerland pardoned citizens who were convicted of helping Jews during World War II.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 28, 2003 | - Several American soldiers were killed by Iraqi guerrillas in various attacks around the country. One died in a car accident.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| December 28, 2003 | - Two Thai and five Bulgarian soldiers and seven Iraqis were killed in four major coordinated car-bomb attacks by guerrillas in Karbala; 500 Bulgarians were evacuated from the area, because their base was destroyed.
| Source:
Washington Post, Reuters
|
| December 25, 2003 | - Grenades, rockets, and mortars were fired at the Ishtar Sheraton Hotel in Baghdad.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| December 19, 2003 | - A federal appeals court ordered President Bush to release Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was arrested last year in Chicago and has been held since then as an enemy combatant. The court ruled that "the president, acting alone, possesses no inherent constitutional authority to detain American citizens seized within the United States, away from the zone of combat, as enemy combatants."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 7, 2003 | - U.S. forces were using Israeli-style tactics against troublesome Iraqis, surrounding some villages with razor wire and forcing residents to carry identification cards, demolishing homes and buildings associated with attacks on Americans, and imprisoning the relatives of suspected guerrillas.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 4, 2003 | -
China warned Taiwan that it was nearing an "abyss of war."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 1, 2003 | - U.S. forces fought a major battle with guerrillas in Samarra and killed up to 54 Iraqis; American officials said the casualties were members of the Fedayeen but local residents said that most were civilians who fought back in self-defense.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| November 23, 2003 | - A rocket hit a hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| November 21, 2003 | - The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency began preliminary research into the development of a "hypersonic cruise vehicle" that in theory will be able to take off from a normal runway in the United States and within two hours strike
targets more than 10,000 miles away.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| November 20, 2003 | -
Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser and one of the architects of the conquest of Iraq, admitted to an audience in London that the invasion was illegal: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."
| Source:
Guardian
|
| November 16, 2003 | - Seventeen U.S. soldiers died when two Black Hawk helicopters collided in Mosul after one of them came under fire.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 15, 2003 | - Newly declassified files from MI5, the British intelligence agency, revealed that in 1940 German
saboteurs had planned to attack Buckingham Palace with exploding cans of French peas.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 14, 2003 | - It was noticed that more U.S. soldiers have died so far in Iraq than in the first three years of the Vietnam War.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 8, 2003 | - U.S. forces responded with airstrikes, the first in Iraq since May 1, when the president dressed up as a fighter pilot and declared victory.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 6, 2003 | - The Department of Defense informed 43,000 additional reserve and national-guard troops that they should prepare for battle.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 5, 2003 | -
President Bush, who has refused to comment directly on the daily casualties in Iraq and has not attended a single funeral for a soldier killed there, traveled to California to inspect the damage from the recent wildfires and was photographed hugging a woman who lost her home.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 4, 2003 | - The Bush Administration was looking to fill vacancies on local draft boards, although Pentagon officials denied that the government plans to reinstate the draft.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| November 3, 2003 | - Iraqi guerrillas hiding in a grove of date palms shot down an American military helicopter near Fallujah; 16 died and 20 were wounded. Most of the soldiers were leaving Iraq on furlough. Two civilian contractors and one U.S. soldier were killed the same day by roadside bombs. "In a long war," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "we are going to have tragic days. But they're necessary."
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 25, 2003 | - Iraqi guerrillas using a homemade launching pad fired eight to ten rockets at the Al Rasheed hotel in Baghdad, where American officials have been staying since April. Some of the Americans were seen fleeing the luxury hotel in their pajamas and shorts; one of the missiles struck a floor just below Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, but he escaped unhurt. The following day, a suicide bomber driving an ambulance struck the offices of the International Red Cross in Baghdad; the bomb left a six-foot-deep crater and broke windows a mile away. Within 45 minutes, bombers struck four police stations in other neighborhoods; at least 34 died and more than 200 were injured in the attacks. "The more successful we are on the ground," said President Bush, "the more these killers will react."
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 23, 2003 | - A former Navy lawyer revealed that President Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert McNamara, his secretary of defense, ordered those who were investigating the 1967 Israeli attack on the American ship Liberty to conclude that the incident, in which 34 American servicemen died, was an accident, even though the evidence pointed overwhelmingly to the contrary.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 23, 2003 | - Colin Powell was trying to make peace in Sudan.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 20, 2003 | - Iraqis in Faluja were photographed dancing on a demolished U.S. Army truck after it was blown up and set on fire by local residents.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 19, 2003 | -
Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, insisted that the war on terrorism is not a religious war.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 16, 2003 | -
Commerce Secretary Donald Evans introduced the new Iraqi dinar, printed in Britain minus the face of Saddam Hussein, in a live broadcast from the Baghdad International Airport, and encouraged investors to come to Iraq. "You have to look beyond these isolated incidents that are occurring," he said.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 10, 2003 | -
President Bush gave a speech before a military crowd in New Hampshire and said that the situation in Iraq is "a lot better than you probably think." On that day in Iraq, a car bomb attack killed eight policemen, a Spanish diplomat was assassinated, and a U.S. soldier was murdered.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| October 9, 2003 | -
Fighting was heavy in Afghanistan.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 6, 2003 | -
David Kay, the head of the CIA team searching for traces of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, issued his status report; Kay admitted that no unconventional weapons had been found but did point to a single vial of botulinum toxin, which an Iraqi scientist had stored in his refrigerator since 1993, as evidence of evil intent. President Bush cited the vial and said that the report justified the invasion.
| Source:
Washington Post, International Herald Tribune
|
| October 6, 2003 | - and Robin Cook, the former foreign minister and leader of the Commons, who resigned to protest Britain's participation in the conquest of Iraq, claimed that Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted privately to him two weeks before the invasion that Saddam Hussein had no weapons that posed a "real and present danger."
| Source:
BBC
|
| September 30, 2003 | - American officials said that there are 650,000 tons of ammunition lying around Iraq, much of it unsecured. General John Abizaid told Congress that "there is more ammunition in Iraq than any place I've ever been in my life, and it is all not securable." Pentagon officials had previously claimed that "all known Iraqi munitions sites are being secured by coalition forces."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 25, 2003 | -
Mongolian troops returned to Baghdad for the first time since 1258, when Hulegu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, destroyed the city and killed 800,000 people.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 19, 2003 | -
President Bush admitted that his "road map" to peace in the Middle East wasn't working very well and blamed it all on Yasir Arafat.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 16, 2003 | -
Bosnia began accepting bids for 105 tanks, 20,000 machine guns, 13,000 submachine guns, 21 missiles, and 13 million pieces of artillery and ammunition that were left over from its civil war.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| September 15, 2003 | -
Colin Powell claimed that Americans "are not occupiers" of Iraq.
"We came as liberators," he said.
"We have liberated a number of countries."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 8, 2003 | -
President George W. Bush made a televised address to the nation and declared that Iraq was now the "central front" in the war on terrorism.
He called for national resolve and national sacrifice and said that he will ask Congress for $87 billion in emergency funds for the occupation.
It was noted that this new request, which comes on top of $79 billion already approved, will probably push the current budget deficit up to $600 billion. Howard Dean said the speech, which made no mention of Osama bin Laden, was "outrageous" and said it reminded him of Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War.
Senator Bob Graham observed that Bush now wants to spend more on Iraq this year than the federal government will spend on education.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 8, 2003 | - and surface-to-air missiles were fired at a transport plane in Baghdad.
Donald Rumsfeld, who was nearby, said that such attacks are just a cost of doing business.
Rumsfeld claimed that there has been "breathtaking" progress in Afghanistan since the war ended.
"I'm not being Pollyannaish," he said.
"I'm telling the truth."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 3, 2003 | - The World Council of Churches denounced the invasion of Iraq as "immoral" and "ill advised" and called for the withdrawal of American forces.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 3, 2003 | - A congressional study found that the occupation of Iraq is unsustainable given the current size of the U.S. military, and the United States released a draft resolution calling on the United Nations to create a multinational peacekeeping force for Iraq that would remain under American military and political control.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 2, 2003 | - Heavy fighting continued in Afghanistan,
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 30, 2003 | - Japan's defense ministry requested $1 billion a year to build a missile defense shield.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 25, 2003 | - and American diplomats revealed that President Bush, after sizing up the situation in Afghanistan "like a businessman," has concluded that an additional investment in that country could lead more quickly to an American withdrawal.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 25, 2003 | - There were reports of a massacre in the northeastern part of the country and heavy fighting between government and rebel forces.
| Source:
BBC, Daily Telegraph
|
| August 23, 2003 | - Three British soldiers were killed in Basra.
| Source:
BBC
|
| August 23, 2003 | -
Fighting continued in Afghanistan between government troops and Taliban guerrillas.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| August 22, 2003 | - The Bush Administration was hoping that the bombing would persuade Europeans to send more troops to Iraq; the French were quite clear that this would require "sharing information and authority." Germany and Russia were also unwilling to allow their troops to serve under U.S. command.
| Source:
BBC
|
| August 22, 2003 | - American soldiers were still dying in Iraq,
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 19, 2003 | - Two groups of rebels signed a peace accord with the Liberian government; "If the war's finished, the war's finished," said General Iron Jacket, a rebel.
General Push the Button was less optimistic.
"I've been fighting for 13 years," he said.
"I'm tired.
But when you disarm someone, you should give them something for their arms."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 17, 2003 | - In Iraq, saboteurs blew up a large oil pipeline to Turkey three days after it reopened,
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 17, 2003 | - a water main was bombed in Baghdad, and U.S. soldiers "engaged" and killed a Reuters cameraman;
| Source:
Austin American Statesman
|
| August 17, 2003 | - the police chief of Mosul was shot and two other officers died in an ambush; a Danish soldier was killed, some American soldiers were shot as they left a restaurant, and a sewage plant was set on fire.
| Source:
BBC
|
| August 13, 2003 | - "Every American needs to believe this," said General Ricardo Sanchez, the head of U.S. forces in Iraq, "that if we fail here in this environment, the next battlefield will be the streets of America."
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 13, 2003 | - The Department of Defense was said to be developing new gamma-ray weapons that it says could "revolutionize all aspects of warfare."
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| August 4, 2003 | -
Liberian civilians were starving in their homes as rebels and government fighters, some wearing women's wigs and blue painted toenails, continued to fight for control of Monrovia; a small number of Nigerian peacekeepers arrived in the country, and a United States official said that American forces would provide "communications assistance" to the peacekeepers and might even go ashore.
| Source:
Guardian, Associated Press, New York Times
|
| August 2, 2003 | - In response to U.S. demands, Belgium voted to gut its own war-crimes law, passed in 1993, under which Belgian courts assumed jurisdiction over atrocities committed anywhere in the world; claims under the law had been filed against such Western leaders as Tony Blair and Ariel Sharon.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 1, 2003 | -
President Bush blamed the weakness of the economy on "the drumbeat to war," which he attributed in turn to the news media.
"Remember on our TV screens — I'm not suggesting which network did this — but it said, 'March to War,' every day from last summer until the spring," Bush said.
"'March to War, March to War.' That's not a very conducive environment for people to take risk, when they hear 'March to War' all the time."
| Source:
Undernews
|
| August 1, 2003 | - Swedish prison guards were protesting the cushy prison conditions of Biljana Plavsic, the former Serb president serving a war-crimes sentence in Sweden.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 22, 2003 | - A spokeswoman for the division that conducted the raid declared, "The 101st kicks ass."
| Source:
CNN
|
| July 22, 2003 | - The former head of the U.S. army's Depleted Uranium Project announced that the damage from munitions used in both Gulf Wars will eclipse the Agent Orange fallout of the Vietnam War.
| Source:
Buffalo News
|
| July 21, 2003 | -
Liberians dumped mangled corpses at the U.S. embassy in Monrovia to protest the lack of American involvement in their civil war.
| Source:
CNN
|
| July 18, 2003 | -
President Bush told a group of surprised reporters that Saddam Hussein had refused to permit weapons inspectors to return to Iraq: "And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power."
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 18, 2003 | - "This is the future for the world we're in at the moment," a special assistant to Donald Rumsfeld said about the unrest in Iraq.
"We'll get better as we do it more often."
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| July 18, 2003 | -
North and South Korean troops had a gunfight at the border.
| Source:
Sydney Morning Herald
|
| July 17, 2003 | - General John Abizaid, the head of U.S. forces in Iraq, admitted that his troops face "a classical guerrilla-type campaign" and said that troops might have to double their expected tours of duty in order to pacify the country.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 12, 2003 | -
President Bush's approval rating was down to 59 percent, according to a new poll, and 52 percent of respondents said that the level of American casualties in Iraq was "unacceptable."
| Source:
Slate
|
| July 11, 2003 | - and the U.S. Central Command reported an average of 13 armed attacks on American forces each day.
| Source:
Asia Times
|
| July 4, 2003 | - The commander of the American forces in Iraq acknowledged that the war was not over.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 2, 2003 | -
President Bush was said to be thinking about bringing peace to the people of Liberia.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 30, 2003 | - The occupying forces responded to the continuing attacks with several large operations.
"We want to send a message of 'Don't mess with us,'" said one officer.
"They will see that we have the flexibility to bring firepower.
That ability is almost magical."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 19, 2003 | - American soldiers in Iraq were being killed at a rate of one per day.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| June 18, 2003 | -
North Korea announced its intention to accelerate its program to build a nuclear deterrent and said that a U.S. naval blockade or embargo could lead to "all-out war"; a state-run newspaper said that "the Iraqi war proved that disarmament leads to war.
Therefore it is quite clear that the DPRK can never accept the U.S. demand that it scrap its nuclear weapons program first."
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 9, 2003 | -
Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade responded to the summit with a joint attack on an Israeli military outpost in Gaza, killing four soldiers.
| Source:
Washington Post, Reuters
|
| June 1, 2003 | - It was estimated that 10,000 cluster bombs were lying around unexploded in Iraq.
| Source:
Observer.co.uk
|
| May 29, 2003 | - A lawmaker in Nebraska proposed declaring war on Iowa.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| April 1, 2003 | -
Lt. General William Wallace, commander of Army forces in the Persian Gulf, said that “the enemy we're fighting is a bit different than the one we war gamed against.” American and British casualties were heavier than expected, and soldiers said they were having a hard time distinguishing Iraqi forces from civilians. “It's not pretty,” said one marine. “It's not surgical. You try to limit collateral damage, but they want to fight. Now it's just smash-mouth football.” The bombing of Baghdad continued; one reporter described seeing a severed hand, a pile of brains, and the remains of a mother and her three small children who were burned alive in their car after two American missiles landed in a crowded market.
| |
| January 21, 2003 | -
Fighting continued in the Ivory Coast.
| |
| January 7, 2003 | -
There was new fighting in the Congo.
| |
| December 3, 2002 | - American forces were preparing for large-scale war games in Qatar, which is expected to be the base for command and control operations during the invasion of Iraq.
| |
| December 3, 2002 | -
Umar Dangladima Magaji, the state commissioner of Nigeria's Zamfara state, issued a fatwa against Isioma Daniel, a fashion writer whose article in a newspaper set off the Miss World riots: “What we are saying is that the holy Koran has clearly stated that whoever insults the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, should be killed.” Fighting continued in the Ivory Coast.
| |
| November 12, 2002 | -
Administration officials confided that they were hoping for a defiant challenge from Saddam Hussein rather than a slow drawn-out refusal that could fritter away the strategically important winter months, which are the best time for fighting a war in the Middle East.
| |
| October 1, 2002 | -
As far as I'm concerned, these people are child-killers.” Amnesty International reported that 236 Palestinian and 61 Israeli children have been killed in the fighting since September 2000.
| |
| August 13, 2002 | -
Anthony Zinni, the former American general, visited Indonesia and met with Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the minister for security affairs, about the separatist fighting in Aceh and said: “I think all sides are convinced that the way to peace is through dialogue.” An American soldier was shot by a sniper in Afghanistan.
| |
| December 25, 2001 | -
India recalled its ambassador to Pakistan and threatened to go to war if Pakistan did not stop sponsoring terrorist groups such as Jaish-e-Muhammad, which attacked India's parliament building last week.
| |
| December 11, 2001 | - The Taliban surrendered Kandahar, the last Afghan city under its control, to a loose confederation of warlords, who immediately began fighting among themselves and looting stores.
| |
| December 4, 2001 | - Prime Minister Sharon “declared war on terror.” A paper in the scientific journal Human Immunology found that Jews and Palestinians have no significant genetic differences; after receiving complaints, the journal's editor repudiated the paper and sent letters to libraries asking them to rip out the offending pages.
| |
| December 4, 2001 | - Two baseball fans were fighting in court over the custody of Barry Bonds's 73rd homerun ball.
| |
| November 20, 2001 | - Vice President Dick Cheney said that suspected terrorists “don't deserve to be treated as a prisoner of war.
| |
| November 13, 2001 | - The president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers denounced the policy as “an abomination” that violates the Sixth Amendment right to an attorney.
| |
| November 6, 2001 | - Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld, asked about the massacre, said: “I cannot deal with that particular village.” General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that United States forces would change the color of the yellow food packets being dropped from the air. “It is unfortunate that the cluster bombs — the unexploded ones — are the same color as the food packets,” he said, but he couldn't say when the change would take place “because there are many in the pipeline.” Human Rights Watch called on the Pentagon to stop using cluster bombs, each of which contains 202 soda-sized yellow bomblets, because “they have proven to be a serious and long-lasting threat to civilians, soldiers, peacekeepers, and even clearance experts.”
| |
| November 6, 2001 | - America recalled its ambassador from Venezuela after President Hugo Chávez denounced the Afghan
war as “fighting terrorism with terrorism” and a “slaughter of innocents.” A Michigan fisherman was attacked by an enraged 200-pound deer; he wrestled the beast for 45 minutes, strangled it with his belt, and finally clubbed it to death with a piece of wood.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | -
Pentagon officials expressed surprise at the toughness of Taliban soldiers and warned that it would probably be a long war.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | - Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld warned that Osama bin Laden might get away: “It's a big world,” he noted.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | - Other Pentagon officials were telling reporters that the Afghan
war will probably just make things worse, that short-term tactical gains may well lead to catastrophic strategic losses.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | - Secretary of State Colin Powell appointed Charlotte Beers, an advertising executive best known for the Head and Shoulders campaign, to be undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs; Beers said her job would be the rebranding of America: “It's the battle for the 11-year-old mind.” Bush Administration officials met with television executives to discuss effective propaganda strategy.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | -
Donald Rumsfeld asserted that the Afghan
war is “not a quagmire.” Israelis and Palestinians continued to make war on one another; the death count rose to 728 Palestinians and 186 Israelis.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | -
United Nations officials asked Ethiopia and Eritrea to please pick up their dead bodies, which were left over from a recent border war, because of the health risk to international peacekeepers.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | - The Belgian Pumpkin Liberation Army stole dozens of Halloween pumpkins; the group, which opposes the “improper” use of pumpkins, announced that it will use the liberated squash to make soup for the poor.
| |
| October 23, 2001 | -
President Bush, who has taken to using the phrase “the Bush doctrine” to describe his war on terrorism, collected $1 donations from American schoolchildren to help feed starving Afghan refugee children. He praised a young girl from Virginia who raised $45 by feeding chickens.
“One way to fight evil is to fight it with kindness and love and compassion,” he said.
“Winter arrives early in Afghanistan.
It's cold, really cold, and the children need warm clothing and they need medicines.
And thanks to the American children, fewer children in Afghanistan will suffer this winter.” That day, at least one American bomb landed in the Red Cross compound in Kabul, setting several warehouses on fire.
| |
| October 23, 2001 | - The plan was called off after the success of the Normandy Invasion.
| |
| October 23, 2001 | - American officials let it be known that President Bush and President Vladimir Putin had come to an historic understanding that would transform relations between their two countries. “Not only is the Cold War over,” said Secretary of State Colin Powell, “the post-Cold War period is also over.”
| |
| October 23, 2001 | - In response to reports of heavy civilian casualties near Darunta, the Pentagon spent millions of dollars buying up exclusive rights to civilian satellite photos of the Afghan bombing zone to prevent the images from falling into the hands of the news media.
| |
| October 23, 2001 | - “Arafat has seven days to impose absolute quiet in the territories,” Sharon declared. “If not, we will go to war against him.”
| |
| October 23, 2001 | -
Britons were having more sex to keep their minds off the war.
| |
| October 16, 2001 | - The United Nations suspended its food convoys into Afghanistan because of the American bombing campaign.
| |
| September 25, 2001 | -
President George W. Bush declared that all the nations of the earth must choose sides in the coming crusade against terrorism, and he promised to attack Afghanistan if its leaders refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, the famous terrorist, whom the President has described as “Wanted: Dead or Alive.” Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld told reporters that the preliminary brand-name of the American military campaign, Operation Infinite Justice, would probably be changed, because it was offensive to Muslims, for whom infinite justice is a divine attribute. Some Christians also found the name offensive.
| |
| September 18, 2001 | -
Pakistan agreed to American demands that it allow a multinational force to attack
Afghanistan from within its borders, though the military establishment there was divided, with some generals calling for a holy war against the West.
| |
| September 18, 2001 | - The Taliban soon warned it would wage a “reprisal war” on any country that helped the United States in such an attack.
| |
| September 18, 2001 | - Congressional Democrats who previously were opposed to President Bush's missile-defense scheme, which would have proved utterly useless on September 11, said they were unlikely to oppose the President in this time of national crisis.
| |
| September 18, 2001 | - “When you are at war,” said Senator Trent Lott, “civil liberties are treated differently.”
| |
| September 11, 2001 | -
War cries rose up from the pundits, the President, members of Congress. Administration officials said they would “end” states that harbor terrorists.
| |
| September 11, 2001 | -
Bush Administration officials contradicted previous statements that they would let China build up its nuclear arsenal if Beijing would simply drop its objections to the missile-defense boondoggle. Russia was beginning to approach the subject with a certain irony. “If they have the money to build the most excessive response to the least probable threat situation, that's okay,” said Vladimir Lukin, deputy speaker of parliament.
| |
| September 4, 2001 | -
John Negroponte, who was the American ambassador to Honduras during the Contra war, was awaiting confirmation as the new U.S. representative at the United Nations.
| |
| September 4, 2001 | - Gideon Ezra, Israel's deputy minister for internal security, had a bright new idea for fighting
terrorism: kill the families of people who kill Israelis.
| |
| August 28, 2001 | -
Granma,
Cuba's
Communist newspaper, accused the United States of waging “biological war” against Cuba, resulting in the loss of $2 million of their honey output.
| |
| August 21, 2001 | -
Donald Rumsfeld, the American secretary of defense, explained that his much-ballyhooed “revolution in military affairs” was not a revolution at all but was instead a “transformation”: “When they see that word,” he explained, seeking to comfort critics in Congress and among the troops, “there's a tendency to think that you go from this to something different.” In fact, he said, you can do something rather modest, like improve communications, which “could be characterized as transformed or transformational.” President George W. Bush declared that peace would come to the Middle East only after everyone stopped fighting.
| |
| August 14, 2001 | - Warring parties in Macedonia signed a peace agreement and kept right on fighting.
| |
| July 31, 2001 | -
President George W. Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin agreed to work toward a disarmament framework that would reduce nuclear weapons while allowing the U.S. its missile-defense scheme; a few days before their discussion, Putin remarked that Bush was “a fairly good-hearted person, nice to talk to, I would even say . . . even a little bit sentimental.”
| |
| July 31, 2001 | - Five million Afghans, one fifth of the country's population, were reported to have little or no access to food due to drought and civil war.
| |
| July 17, 2001 | - The Pentagon did away with its “two-war” doctrine.
| |
| July 10, 2001 | -
Ariel Sharon, the prime minister of Israel, was under investigation in Belgium for crimes against humanity committed during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
| |
| July 10, 2001 | - A peace plan was accepted in Sudan, where an 18-year civil war has caused almost two million deaths.
| |
| July 3, 2001 | -
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that he would ask Congress to retire the MX missile, also known as the “Peacekeeper.” Bob Dole had an aneurysm.
| |
| June 26, 2001 | - Yugoslavia's federal cabinet adopted a decree permitting the extradition of Slobodan Milosevic and others to the war-crimes tribunal at The Hague.
| |
| June 19, 2001 | -
President Bush went to Europe but avoided France and Germany, whose leaders are unlikely to go along with his missile-defense scheme. “There's some nervousness,” the President said, “and I understand that. But it's beginning to be allayed when they hear the logic behind the rationale.” In Sweden, at a meeting of the European Union, Bush told reporters that “we spent a lot of time talking about Africa, and we should.
| |
| June 19, 2001 | - The United States made clear its opposition to sending peacekeeping troops to Macedonia, preferring to wait until the conflict leads to a wider war and genocide of one kind or another.
| |
| June 12, 2001 | -
Trent Lott, the outgoing Senate majority leader, wrote a memo to his Republican colleagues declaring war on the Democrats.
| |
| June 12, 2001 | - Carlos Castaño, the leader of the United Self-Defense Forces, an army of death squads that terrorize Colombia, said he was retiring to devote more time to poisoning the legitimate political process.
| |
| June 12, 2001 | - Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said that the White House was willing to deploy anti-missile defense
technology before it was proved to work.
| |
| May 8, 2001 | -
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered that all routine contact with the Chinese military be suspended, then revoked the order after the White House got upset, which led to speculation of a power struggle within the Republican cabal. “We're going to review all opportunities to interface with the Chinese,” President Bush clarified.
| |
| May 8, 2001 | -
Tokyo declared war on its crows.
| |
| May 1, 2001 | -
Britain's Ministry of Defense admitted that the British army had paid for a number of female soldiers to have breast augmentation surgery: “This is not done purely on cosmetic grounds, but as a last resort,” a spokesman said.
| |
| April 24, 2001 | - A barber in Amsterdam who stabbed a violent customer to death with a pair of scissors was released after it was found that he acted in self-defense.
| |
| April 17, 2001 | - The League of the South, an organization devoted to Confederate nostalgia, began circulating a petition at gun shows and convenience stores demanding reparations for Southerners whose ancestors' way of life was destroyed by Yankees in the Civil War.
| |
| April 17, 2001 | - A new poll found that most Mississippians would prefer to keep their current state flag, which contains an image of the Confederate battle flag.
| |
| April 17, 2001 | - The United States and Europe finally ended their nine-year banana war.
| |
| March 27, 2001 | -
Moscow warned the United States about its new Cold War rhetoric; the Russians were upset over remarks by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who said that “Russia is an active proliferator” of dangerous weapons
technology which “seems to be willing to sell anything to anyone for money.” The United States expelled 50 Russian diplomats, four of whom were thought to have been working with Robert Philip Hanssen, the FBI agent recently arrested for spying; Russia in turn said it would expel the 50 diplomats most precious to America.
| |
| March 27, 2001 | -
Fighting with Albanian rebels continued in Macedonia; the Bush Administration and NATO were refusing to get involved, preferring to wait until they were humiliated by large massacres and ethnic cleansing.
| |
| March 20, 2001 | -
North and South Korea exchanged mail for the first time since the Korean War.
| |
| February 27, 2001 | - Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister who lost the recent election to Ariel Sharon, a known war criminal, resigned from politics, then agreed to be Sharon's defense minister in a government of national unity, then resigned from politics again.
| |
| February 27, 2001 | - A war-crimes tribunal convicted three Serbs of sexually enslaving Muslim girls and women during the Bosnian war.
| |
| February 20, 2001 | -
Russia warned that the United States was reverting to Cold War rhetoric after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denounced Russia as an “active proliferator” of dangerous technology. “They are part of the problem,” he said, defending President George W. Bush's plans, over Russia's objections, to deploy an anti-missile system. “Why they would be actively proliferating and then complaining when the United States wants to defend itself against the fruit of those proliferation activities it seems to me is misplaced.”
| |
| February 13, 2001 | -
Ariel Sharon, a known war criminal, was elected prime minister of Israel; Sharon declared that the peace process was dead and that the Palestinians must submit to Israeli domination before negotiations could resume.
| |
| February 13, 2001 | -
United States Secretary of State Colin Powell defended President George W. Bush's plans to deploy the national missile defense system despite its technical and political flaws: “I don't consider it as being an arrogant position,” he said. “Or one where we are trying to force anything on the rest of the world.” Russian
defense minister Igor Sergeyev warned that Russia still had “three mighty programs to asymmetrically counteract U.S. national missile defense forces,” which were developed to defeat President Ronald Reagan's pie-in-the-sky Star Wars program.
| |
| February 13, 2001 | - A British hospital apologized to plastic-surgery patients for selling their surplus skin to the Defense Evaluation and Research Agency for chemical-weapons research.
| |
| January 23, 2001 | - London officials cancelled the license of the pigeon-food vendor in Trafalgar Square as part of a new war on bird droppings. After animal-rights groups expressed concern over the starvation of the birds, it was announced that the square's 3,000 pigeons would be fed for another month.
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| January 9, 2001 | - Cambodia said it would set up a war-crimes court to try Khmer Rouge leaders.
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| December 26, 2000 | - U.S. officials decided not to apologize for the slaughter of unarmed Korean civilians at No Gun Ri during the Korean War.
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| December 19, 2000 | -
Mississippi was thinking about removing the image of the Confederate battle flag from its state flag, which was accidently decertified in 1906.
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| December 19, 2000 | - After months of preventing Palestinians from entering Israel to work, thus destroying the economy of the Occupied Territories, the Israeli government “came to the conclusion,” in the words of the defense minister, “that it did not serve any productive purpose to have severe economic distress in the territories.”
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| December 12, 2000 | -
Pentagon investigators acknowledged that American troops had massacred unarmed Korean civilians near No Gun Ri at the beginning of the Korean War, but claimed there was no evidence of direct orders from superiors to kill the Koreans, which would constitute a war crime.
| |
| December 12, 2000 | - Many countries were trying unsuccessfully to get the United States to join the International Criminal Court; Henry Kissinger and other former U.S. government officials, who perhaps had good reason to be personally alarmed, wrote a letter denouncing the court as an invasion of American sovereignty.
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| December 5, 2000 | - Mary Robinson, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, recommended sending international monitors to the West Bank and Gaza, saying that life for Palestinians under the Israeli occupation was “dehumanizing.” The Israeli government issued a report claiming that Palestinians and not Israeli defense forces actually shot and killed 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durah as he cowered with his father; the report, which relied heavily on civilians with no training in ballistics, was widely ridiculed. Israel's daily paper Ha'aretz wrote: “It is hard to describe in mild terms the stupidity of this bizarre investigation.”
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| December 5, 2000 | - New Jersey confirmed that 80 percent of the searches performed by state troopers over the last decade were of cars driven by blacks or Hispanics but pointed out that the federal government's Drug Enforcement Agency had encouraged racial profiling in the name of the War on Drugs.
| |
| December 5, 2000 | - Anarchists, Greens, and other anti-globalists nostalgically marked the anniversary of the so-called Battle of Seattle: “It will go down as the single most important event in American history—more so than dropping the bomb, even,” a tofu salesman told a reporter.
| |
| November 28, 2000 | -
Israeli
defense forces responded to terrorist
attacks with bombs of their own, killing several adults and dismembering at least one child.
| |
| November 14, 2000 | -
Israel
assassinated a Palestinian paramilitary commander by blowing up his vehicle with missiles fired from helicopter gunships; two women who were standing nearby were also killed. One witness described seeing the women's bodies with “their intestines and livers hanging out.” An Israeli general said that he hoped the assassination would “reduce the violence and bring reason back to this area.” Heavier fighting followed; two Israeli soldiers and more Palestinians, including a twelve-year-old boy, were shot dead.
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| November 7, 2000 | - Veterans of the Korean War were offered free testing for exposure to Agent Orange after the Pentagon admitted that soldiers applied the toxic herbicide along the Korean border.
| |
| October 10, 2000 | - DNA tests identified the Hungarian WWII prisoner of war who spent 53 years in a Russian mental hospital.
| |
| October 10, 2000 | - The Mid-East peace process continued as Israeli soldiers killed 84 Palestinians, including over a dozen children, in violence that followed a visit to the Dome of the Rock by Likud leader Ariel Sharon; two Israeli soldiers and two settlers were killed in the fighting.
| |
| October 3, 2000 | - A New York jury ordered Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb war criminal, to pay $4.5 million in damages for presiding over a policy of rape, torture, and genocide in Bosnia.
| |
| October 3, 2000 | - Quebecois terrorists known as the French Language Self-Defense Brigade claimed responsibility for bombing a church in Montreal.
| |
| October 3, 2000 | - The defense ministers of North and South Korea met and decided to fix a railroad.
| |
| September 26, 2000 | - The Sons of Italy, a local civic group in Denver, Colorado, decided to call their annual Columbus Day parade the March of Italian Pride after a band of Indians, for whom Columbus is a hated symbol of their conquest, threatened to disrupt it.
| |
| September 12, 2000 | - One hundred and forty-nine world leaders disrupted traffic in New York City; United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan warned that disease, poverty, war, hunger, and pollution were difficult problems that required cooperation among nations.
| |
| September 12, 2000 | - A Pentagon
security gate popped up and wrecked a car carrying the German
defense minister; two years ago the same thing happened to the Japanese defense minister.
| |
| September 12, 2000 | -
Russia's
defense minister confirmed that President Putin plans to cut the Russian military by a third.
| |
| September 5, 2000 | - European earthworms continued their relentless invasion of North America.
| |
| August 22, 2000 | - Ole Miss won the right to prevent spectators from waving the Confederate battle flag at sporting events.
| |
| August 22, 2000 | -
Russia's Orthodox Church rejected genetic engineering, homosexuality, euthanasia, and abortion while reaffirming private property and the church's close ties to the Russian military.
| |
| August 15, 2000 | - A National Academy of Sciences report found that most U.S. nuclear bomb-making facilities, including the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, will be contaminated “in perpetuity.” Defense Secretary William S. Cohen delayed making his recommendation to President Clinton concerning the wisdom of building a national missile defense program.
| |
| August 15, 2000 | - The Archdiocese of Guatemala issued a report on the abduction of children during the country's 36-year civil war; it found that most of the abductions were carried out by government security forces.
| |
| August 8, 2000 | - It was the tenth anniversary of Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait; Alaa Hussein Ali, who led Kuwait's puppet government during the occupation, filed suit against Saddam Hussein for compelling him to collaborate with Iraqi forces.
| |
| August 8, 2000 | - The NAACP will move its annual convention from its customary location in South Carolina to protest the continued presence of the Confederate Battle Flag on a Civil War monument near the state capitol.
| |
| August 1, 2000 | - President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela was reelected in what he called a “mega-election”; Chavez vowed to complete his peaceful social revolution against Venezuela's “rancid oligarchy” by “liquidating our adversaries from the field of battle.” Classes resumed in Myanmar, almost four years after SLORC, the country's military junta, banned higher education.
| |
| August 1, 2000 | -
Republican Presidential Candidate George W. Bush chose Dick Cheney, his father's secretary of defense during the Gulf War, to be his running mate.
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