Brief summary from here:
www.geocities.com/purplesage23/apr03.html4/1/03: Jessica Lynch rescued. Pentagon begins perpetuating made-for-TV-movie-like rescue by U.S. special forces and Lynch's "amnesia."
4/2/03: U.S. forces reach outskirts of Baghdad, run into heavy resistance from Republican Guard. Kurds take city of Mosul.
4/3/03: U.S. takes Saddam International Airport.
4/3/03: State Dept. publishes 'Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations' which predicts U.S. arms sales abroad will exceed $14 billion; the highest in 20 years.
4/3/03: James Woolsey makes claim U.S. is in 'World War IV', which will involve the U.S. battling fascist, terrorist regimes in Iran and Syria and groups like al-Qaeda for years to come. Also singles out Egypt and Saudi Arabia claiming to want to make them nervous. This reflects a presentation given by a scholar from the Rand Corp. which called Iraq a 'tactical pivot', Saudi Arabia a 'strategic pivot' and Egypt 'the prize'.
4/5/03: Bush asks Congress for $2.5 billion in reconstruction funds for Iraq, but requests that this money be allocated directly to the White House in order to conceal how it's spent from Congressional oversight.
4/7/03: Two days before capturing Baghdad, U.S. installs Ahmad Chalabi and the INC as new leaders of Iraq. Chalabi declines at first, but the administration publicly continues to press Chalabi to take the position of president.
4/7/03: Police fire on crowd of anti-war protestors in Oakland, CA with rubber bullets, sandbags and concussion grenades, injuring 6 longshoremen who were not involved with the protest. Protesters were blocking President's Line pier, which they claim was profiting from the war. First incident during Iraq War of police using force to disperse crowd of protesters.
4/8/03: U.S. claims to have killed Ali Hassan al-Majid, aka "Chemical Ali", in a bombing raid in Basra. U.S. had also claimed it killed "Chemical Ali" in decapitation strike in mid-March 2003. Neither claim was true, however, as in late August 2003, "Chemical Ali" was taken into custody by U.S. forces. In 1992, Henry Waxman detailed the deep connections between "Chemical Ali" and many rightwing U.S. corporations, organizations and politicians.
4/8/03: U.S. tanks shell Palestine Hotel in Baghdad killing 3 journalists. Pentagon claims tanks were firing on Iraqi snipers located on the roof of the building. Foreign journalists located at hotel dispute this claim saying the Pentagon knew the hotel was home to scores of foreign journalists. Camera footage shows there were no Iraqi military at Palestine Hotel. One French journalist interviews 3 U.S. Marines after the shell attack and discovers the Pentagon misled them about the members of the Coalition as the Marines ask where the French and Russian armies are.
4/9/03: Fall of Baghdad; U.S. stages photo op of toppling of Hussein's statue.
4/10/03: Kurdish troops take Kirkuk.
4/10/03: At pro-war rally, NY Governor George Pataki claims the Iraq war started in NYC on Sept. 11th.
4/11/03: The prophetic Dr. Renwar Reben, an Iraqi refugee, predicts the next stage of the Iraq War will involve the civilian population attacking their occupiers.
4/11/03: Katrina Leung, a Californian Republican operative and undercover FBI operative, is arrested on charges of spying for China. Leung had affairs with two of her FBI handlers whom she was alleged to have stolen top secret documents from. Leung was also an employee of Nortel Networks and had given substantial contributions to Richard Riordan, Bill Simon and the RNC. Leung was recently appointed a voting member of the California GOP's central committee by U.S. Rep. David Dreier. Leung's lawyers, of course, claimed she was innocent on all charges.
4/12/03: Looting begins in Baghdad and Basra. Government buildings, with the exception of the Oil Ministry, are ransacked along with hospitals and museums.
4/13/03: Tikrit falls to U.S. forces.
4/13/03: Ahmad Chalabi, acting as interim leader of Iraq, claims that a governing council comprised of Iraqis will be formed as soon as Gen. Jay Garner is finished restoring basic services to Iraqis. Chalabi claims this will be accomplished within a matter of weeks.
4/14/03: In a
Salon interview, Ron Reagan, Jr. compares Bush with his father but criticizes administration's rush to war.
4/15/03: U.S. and UK declare end of hostilities in Iraq. U.S. formally appoints Jay Garner as head of interim Iraqi post-war administration. Administration's justification for war begins changes from Hussein's possession of WMDs to "freeing the Iraqi people." U.S. refuses to allow UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq.
NY Times reveals Halliburton and Bechtel were recipients of no-bid contracts for reconstruction which were awarded in October 2002.
A document leaked from the State Dept. shows plan for rebuilding Iraq making it a corporate haven of no taxes, regulations or restrictions of any kind and total corporate access to Iraq's oil assets.
4/17/03: Rumsfeld reveals he doesn't expect to find any WMDs in Iraq.
4/22/03: U.S. Army ends occupation of Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate building, which is later looted. the NMD building was home to information re: UN weapons inspections and Iraq's previous WMD programs.
4/24/03: In an interview with Tom Brokaw, Bush claims Hussein must have destroyed his WMD or dispersed them but claims they will be found.
4/25/03:
Daily Telegraph and
Christian Science Monitor begin floating story that documents were found in Qusay Hussein's home showing that George Galloway was given $10 million by Saddam Hussein to oppose the war. Documents were later proven to be forgeries.
4/26/03: U.S. and UK co-sponsor UN resolution limiting UN's role in managing post-war Iraq. Despite objections from France and Germany, resolution passes which also gives U.S. and UK sole control over Iraq's oil revenues.
4/30/03: U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman writes Rumsfeld asking him to clear up why, from 1984-2000, Halliburton was allowed to conduct trade with Iraq through subsidiary corporations in the Cayman Islands despite Federal laws which prohibited U.S. corporations from doing business with Iraq since the 1980s.
