Posted on 01/09/2006 9:28:53 PM PST by smoothsailing
Terrorist Involvement - Was There Or Wasn't There?
By Thomas D. Segel
January 10, 2006
In the latest issue of The Weekly Standard there is an interesting article by Stephen F. Hayes titled "Saddam's Terror Training Camps". In it the author reports the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein...
"Trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq."
Now this can't possibly be correct. The mainstream media and the liberal left have repeatedly told us there were no terrorists in Iraq and it was only the United States involvement in mid-east that brought terrorists into the country. This is the stock statement when anything on the matter is broadcast or placed in print.
It would be difficult indeed, to find an article in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times or the New York Times that makes those contrary statements penned by Stephen Hayes.
Many of the terrorists training in Iraqi camps were drawn from groups in northern Africa with close links to al Qaeda. More than 2,000 were trained in Iraq and the author claims many have returned and are responsible for the attacks, which have taken place since the invasion.
How does Hayes justify these statements? He says, "The photographs and documents on Iraqi training camps come from a collection of some 2 million exploitable items captured in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. They include handwritten notes, typed documents, audiotapes, videotapes, compact discs, floppy discs and computer hard drives."
These could very well be the rantings of some very right wing conservative writer attempting to justify the Bush decision to continue the War of Terror by attacking Iraq. That can be the only excuse other media sources could have for not reporting such important news. The documentation is there for any other legitimate source to examine.
There are other reports too, which should have waved flags at traditional publications and launched them on an extensive investigation to disprove the facts being presented.
For example, those documents show that Abdul Rahman Yasin, the only member of the al Qaeda cell that detonated the bomb in the 1993 World Trade Center attack to remain at large, fled to Iraq, where he was given a house and a monthly salary.
An al Qaeda member now in United States custody has confessed that in the 1990s bin Laden made an agreement with Saddam Hussein to cease all terrorist attacks inside Iraq.
Another report has a former colonel in Saddam's Fedayeen saying bin Laden's fighters were in Iraq in 1997 and that he observed them in a training camp in Salman Pak, southeast of Baghdad.
Reports upon reports are available and could be reviewed by legitimate press services. Little effort has been made by these media sources to make that information a central factor of the debate on why the war is being fought in Iraq. Instead, from CNN News to the Democrat Bloggers and from party line newspapers to the New York Times, all the public hears are chants that "Bush Lied!"
Many of the facts mentioned in this article and in the Weekly Standard are contained in a book by Richard Minter titled "Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror", which was on the bestseller lists in 2003. Mr. Minter is a senior fellow at the Center for the New Europe and his writings can also be found online at Tech Central Station.com.
These facts, according to the Weekly Standard article have come to light after translation of only 50,000 documents. There has been so much intelligence uncovered that at the current rate of translation two more generations of language experts will be required to bring all the details to light. But, even if that happens there will be those in government and the media who claim there was no involvement with al Qaeda and there was no terrorist activity in Iraq before the Americans launched their attack. --------------------
Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.
The effort by the MSM to cover up Saddam's ties to terrorists is contemptible. Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with terrorists, period.
As mentioned here by other posters, I hope Bush mentions this in his State of the Union address.
add Salman Pak to Nidal, Abbas, Abdul Rahman Yasin and Zarqawi touching down there after 2001 and you have be pretty sure there is a lot of terrorism being plotted from there.
also a good link about Iraq's terror links http://www.defenddemocracy.org/in_the_media/in_the_media_show.htm?doc_id=208308&attrib_id=7378
Thanks.It's going to take me a while to read all that so I saved it.I did scroll down and saw the part about the 30 man commando unit trained at Salmon Pak.Doesn't leave much room for doubt.
Thanks for the link.I think I read this at the time, but haved saved it to read again as a memory refresher.
Hayes was on Hannity & Colmes last night and according to him the Bush administration is not releasing these documents even though most are not classified. He said his report was based on a dozen highly credible sources and paradoxically (!) this would support many of the claims made by Bush before the war and establish a link between Saddam and AlQaeda. Go figure!
ping
What!! So Hayes has uncovered hundreds of incriminating pieces of evidence tying Hussein to Al-Qaeda and international Islamic terrorism? "So what!!!" say all the libs..."we prefer our present position with half of us having our heads in the sand and the other half having our heads jammed up our"...well, never mind.
Links to Docex project
http://www.corante.com/betweenlawyers/archives/2006/01/07/open_source_intelligence_analysis.php
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1553129/posts
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/475yhurv.asp?pg=2
http://www.azcentral.com/php-bin/clicktrack/print.php?referer=http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/1223fri2-23.html
I'll bet they're still yielding intelligence and pointing in particular directions and even specific places for finding more intelligence -- places we don't want the enemy we're looking.
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