Saturday, January 7, 2006
New Saddam Documents Detail Terror Training
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."
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."
