Posted on 01/06/2006 8:20:55 PM PST by wagglebee
The Bush administration is preparing to release never-before-seen documents captured when U.S. forces liberated Baghdad that chronicle the extensive training of thousands of radical Islamic terrorists by Saddam Hussein's regime.
"The secret training took place primarily at three camps in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak," reports the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, who adds that the operations began two years before the 9/11 attacks and were "directed by elite Iraqi military units."
The existence of these documents, and the nature of what they describe, has been confirmed to the Standard by eleven U.S. government officials, Hayes says.
If true, the documents represent a bombshell finding that shatters the claims of Iraq war critics who have maintained for three years that Saddam Hussein had no connection whatsoever to Islamic terrorism.
More intriguing still is the documentation on Salman Pak - a camp previously described by Iraqi defectors as the location of airline hijacking dress rehearsals that bear a striking resemblance to what took place on 9/11.
Hayes reports that the materials currently being reviewed for release include photographs, handwritten notes, typed documents, audiotapes and videotapes - plus information recovered from compact discs, floppy discs and computer hard drives.
Taken together, the material chronicles a massive operation that trained 2,000 terrorists to attack Western interests each year from 1999 to 2002.
The volume of material examined so far represents the tip of the iceberg. Of the 2 million items recovered from Saddam's regime, just 50,000 have been thoroughly translated and analyzed.
"Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has convened several meetings in recent weeks to discuss the Pentagon's role in expediting the release of this information," the Standard says.
"According to several sources familiar with his thinking, Rumsfeld is pushing aggressively for a massive dump of the captured documents."
Not if its during the State of the Union.
No surprise. Terrorist training at Salman Pak, the camp south of Baghdad, was detailed in a lengthy article with color photos in Vanity Fair magazine a month or so before we invaded Iraq--including a photo of a "hijacking training" aircraft on the ground. Vanity Fair has no online access and never referenced that article again, nor did any other media. So you think they'll get honest now?
The professional Iraqi trainers at Salman Pak laughed at crazy terrorists-in-training from other Muslim countries who were motivated by extreme Islamic hatred and didn't care whether they lived or died. There were plenty of them.
Thank you.
This doesn't count. We didn't have this information when we went in. The President still used faulty intelligence and lied to the American people on his reasons for going to war.
"Tonight, sadly the President has mislead the American public about Iraq and blatantly forced his religion onto the viewing American Public............"
- John Kerry
'Livin on a Prayer''s lyrics are SO ripe to jack with.
H***, the Salman Pak training ground has been documented and catalogued only to be flushed down the toilet by our Marxist friends while our RINOs stood by wringing their hands. I remember seeing those video shots CLEARLY and talking about them until blue in the face. I think the aircraft was a 707, actually a Russian TU-154 (see Military Mag Vol. XXII, #8, also, "A Thousand Years For Revenge" good documentation of the etiology of this war). It does no good if credible information is ignored by the flapping gum Dhimmicrats and cowardly Repubs.
This thing is going to break loose big time, prepare yourselves.
From the Weekly Standard article:
"Throughout the 1980s, including the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam cast himself as a holy warrior in his public rhetoric to counter the claims from Iran that he was an infidel.
"This posturing continued during and after the first Gulf war in 1990-91. Saddam famously ordered "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) added to the Iraqi flag. Internally, he launched "The Faith Campaign," which according to leading Saddam Hussein scholar Amatzia Baram included the imposition of sharia (Islamic law).
" According to Baram, "The Iraqi president initiated laws forbidding the public consumption of alcohol and introduced enhanced compulsory study of the Koran at all educational levels, including Baath Party branches."
" Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law who defected to Jordan in 1995, explained these changes in an interview with Rolf Ekeus, then head of the U.N. weapons inspection program. "The government of Iraq is instigating fundamentalism in the country," he said, adding, "Every party member has to pass a religious exam. They even stopped party meetings for prayers."
Re Salman Pak/WMDs, the rats will continue with their 'do you believe me, or your lying eyes' which so far seems to be batting .950
From the Weekly Standard article:
"The project seems overwhelmed at the moment, with a mere 50,000 documents translated completely out of a total of 2 million."
Also it looks like there was disagreement about releasing the documents:
"The main worry, says DiRita, is that the mainstream press might cherry-pick documents and mischaracterize their meaning. "There is always the concern that people would be chasing a lot of information good or bad, and when the Times or the Post splashes a headline about some sensational-sounding document that would seem to 'prove' that sanctions were working, or that Saddam was just a misunderstood patriot, or some other nonsense, we'd spend a lot of time chasing around after it."
"This is a view many officials attributed to Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Steve Cambone. (Cambone, through a spokesman, declined to be interviewed.) For months, Cambone has argued internally against expediting the release of the documents.
"Cambone is the problem," says one former Bush administration official who wants the documents released. "He has blocked this every step of the way." In what is perhaps a sign of a changing dynamic within the administration, Cambone is now saying that he, like his boss, favors a broad document release.
Saddam was openly giving cash-payments to families of pali homicide bombers --- and the MSM never considered that as support for terrorism. Why would this change their minds?
BTTT & Bookmarked. Thanks for posting.
Whoops - PING to WPtG!
Rope-A-Dope to the max.
Bring it on already BUMP!!
Remember how badly the "16 words" were were misconstrued by the RATS even though they were true?
Rumsfeld and Bush need to get this stuff out now, and make sure they link it to 9/11, Al Qaeda, bin Laden, and the efforts the US has made to defend herself against further attack. If details about prevented attacks in the US get published in Italian newspapers, why the heck aren't they published in the US? Oh, silly me, I forgot, the dems and the MSM are in bed with Islamofascists.
The State of the Union is probably where Bush will use this, and the MSM will cut away to cover the Left's planned demonstrations. Leftist nirvana: to throw a bucket of blood on Bush as he speaks from the podium. CNN, etc. would replay that ad infinitum.
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