2000 – A House panel said in a report that the program to inoculate all 2.4 million American military personnel against anthrax was based on “a paucity of science” and should be suspended; the Pentagon defended the program and vowed to continue the inoculations.
2003 – European Union leaders declared their solidarity with the United States, warning Saddam Hussein that Iraq faced one “last chance” to disarm peacefully but calling war a last resort.
2005 – President Bush named John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as the government’s first national intelligence director (DNI). Central American politicians and human rights activists issued stinging criticism of Negroponte, citing the career diplomat’s active backing for the Contra rebels and support for a government involved in human rights abuses.
2005 – Iraq’s electoral commission certified the results of the Jan. 30 elections and allocated 140 of 275 National Assembly seats to the United Iraqi Alliance, giving the Shiite-dominated party a majority in the new parliament.
2009 – 17,000 extra US troops were ordered to Afghanistan to bolster security in the country and thereby boosted the 36,000 US troops already there by 50%. “This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires,” Obama said in a written statement. “The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and Al-Qaeda supports the insurgency and threatens America from its safe haven along the Pakistani border,” Obama also said. He recognized “the extraordinary strain this deployment places on our troops and military families”, but the deteriorating security situation in the region required “urgent attention and swift action”.
2010 – U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that as of 1 September, the name “Operation Iraqi Freedom” would be replaced by “Operation New Dawn”.
2012 – United States Capitol Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Amine El Khalifi, a man from Morocco who allegedly planned a suicide attack on the United States Capitol. At a hearing on June 22, 2012 before U.S. District Court Judge James C. Cacheris, El Khalifi pleaded guilty to one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction (specifically, a destructive device consisting of an improvised explosive device) against U.S. property, namely, the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. As part of the plea agreement, the United States and El Khalifi agree that a sentence within a range of 25 years to 30 years’ incarceration is the appropriate disposition of this case. El Khalifi was sentenced to 30 years in prison on September 14, 2012.
2014 – Venezuela orders the expulsion of three US consular officials amid rising tensions over anti-government protests after accusing the US of working with the opposition to undermine President Nicolás Maduro’s government.
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/february-17/
