Posted on 03/15/2003 8:07:52 AM PST by Republican_Strategist
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This webpage's details will be handy for Rush Limbaugh when his public enemies at the "liberal media" come a callin'.
Please see replies 67 and 72.
The fuselage may in fact be used for training highjackers (and probably is) BUT there is nothing in this photographic evidence to show that this is not in fact used to train COUNTER-highjackers. How do you suppose the FBI trains for freeing aircraft which are held hostage? Could it be the FBI uses an old airliner fuselage?
Apologies to Rush et al but there has got to be better evidence than these aerial photos.
Frankfurt Airport, Germany
Lingshui --- Downed U.S. Navy EP-3, March - April 2001
Lingshui --- Downed U.S. Navy EP-3, March - April 2001
Certainly not, and it is probable that the military forces there would deal very harshly and promptly with any hijacked aircraft heading toward a population center. Are you aware of any such attempt there, or of any other past hijacking?
Because there are at least two involving the Tupolev-154 type aircraft, noted previously as being similar to the aircraft seen at this *training facility.*
One is described here. Just a bit more circumstancial evidence to add to the stewpot.
-archy-/-
Tupolev-134 more closely resembles the nose length, and is very much a low-wing design, as per the photo in post #92.
One feature suggesting that it's a Trident, is the door at the leading edge of the left wing. The satellite pic shows the that door; it appears to be open. The left door near the cockpit, also appears to be open. In the photo with Scott Ritter, the right door near the cockpit is open.
If the guy has any smarts, he's training flight attendants instead, most, though certainly not all of whom are much more pleasant to look at than the terrorists.
On a satellite photo, he picks out Salman Pak's main features. In the southern part of the camp, at a bend in the Tigris River, is the barracks used for non-lraqi Arabs, Islamic fundamentalists who first came to Salman Pak in 1995 to be trained in classes of 24 by al-Qurairy's closest friend, Brigadier General Jassim Rashid al-Dulaimi. He is a man who practices what he preaches: he is wanted by Lebanese authorities for the 1994 murder of an opposition leader in Beirut. As recently as the summer of 2000, al-Qurairy saw the Arab students being taught to hijack aircraft on Salman Pak's own passenger jet, an Old Russian Tupolev. They all took a special course, he says, "how to gain control of the cockpit and passengers without using firearms." Professional pride meant the Iraqis ensured the Islamists reached a high standard: "When we train non-lraqis, we're not training them to preach in a mosque. We don't expect them to preach in a mosque, but to carry out offensive duties." But al- Dulaimi and his fellow instructors, all members of Saddam's secular Ba'ath Party, regarded their Islamist students with contempt. "When Jassim and I go for a drink after work, Jassim says they are sons of bitches. They have all this work to do, but they spend half their time praying."
-- Vanity Fair, Inside Saddam's Terror Regime -- January 21, 2002
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NYT: What kind of training went on, and who was being trained?
Sabah Khodada: Training is majorly on terrorism. They would be trained on assassinations, kidnapping, hijacking of airplanes, hijacking of buses, public buses, hijacking of trains and all other kinds of operations related to terrorism.
NYT: The people being trained were Iraqis in one group, and non-Iraqis, or foreign nationals, in another?
Sabah Khodada: Non-Iraqis were trained separately from us. There were strict orders not to meet with them and not to talk to them. And even when they conduct their training, their training has to occur at times different from the times when we conduct the Iraqis our own training.
-- Sabah Khodada was a captain in the Iraqi army from 1982 to 1992. He worked at what he describes as a highly secret terrorist training camp at Salman Pak (see Khodada's hand-drawn map of the camp), an area south of Baghdad. In this translated interview, conducted in association with The New York Times on Oct. 14, 2001, Khodada describes what went on at Salman Pak, including details on training hijackers. He emigrated to the U.S. in May 2001.
NTY: And they trained people to hijack airplanes?
Sabah Khodada: Yes.
NYT: For what purpose?
Sabah Khodada: It has been said openly in the media and even to us, from the highest command, that the purpose of establishing Saddam's fighters is to attack American targets and American interests. This is known. There's no doubt about it.
-- New York Times interview with Iraqi Army Captain Sabah Khodada on October 14, 2001 (transcript courtesy of PBS' Frontline.
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United States Marines searching a shattered former Headquarters of the Iraqi Republican Guard have found what one military offficial calls 'critical' documents on enemy weapons and communications.
At another site they found the shell of a jet believe to be used to practice hijackings.
The finds were in Salman Pak, just southeast of Baghdad.
United States Military officials say that there is a suspected weapons of mass destruction site in the town that dates back to 1991.
There is also an airstrip in the town that the Bush Administration says Iraq used more recently to offer terrorist training to Islamic militants.
-- Associated Press, April 6, 2003
Its a partial aircraft
There are no shadows beneath the "wings."
It has no landing gear
The leading edge of the root of the "vertical stabilizer" is ahead of the "wingtips" and starts (from "nose" to "tail") at the aft, trailing root of the "wings" --- there is no such aircraft shape in the inventories.
It is a partial aircraft
To the "southeast" of the "jet," there is a collection of similarly-colored material, probably a pile of rocks associated with the "structure."
????
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