Doesn't look like it.
Saddam's Terror Training CampsSaddam was quite the bad boy, wasn't he? It'll be interesting to see what all this uncovers. Of course, there'll probably be something more important on the mind of the MSM, like the plight of the veternarian who was taking care of Wacko Jacko's menagerie.THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.
The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. According to three officials with knowledge of the intelligence on Iraqi training camps, White House and National Security Council officials were briefed on these findings in May 2005; senior Defense Department officials subsequently received the same briefing.
After all, you gotta have priorities.
J.
Comments (2)
Fort Benning, Georgia, has also trained lots of terrorists. Are WE a terrorist nation?
Posted by rawb | January 8, 2006 9:40 PM
Posted on January 8, 2006 21:40
There's folks who'd answer yes to that, Rawb, as you know. We did train Noriega there - but I'm putting it into a larger context that a lot of folks would like to completely disassociate it from. What would Saddam's purpose have been in training them from 1999 to 2002? What was our purpose in establishing the SOA?
I could also argue that once someone graduates from a particular school, it's up to that person to determine their own path. Fer example, once you graduate in a couple of months, how much responsibility does your alma mater hold in what you choose to do with your life? If you use your l33t skillz to crack into bank networks or hack PayPal, is your moral choice the responsibility of the school?
You can tell people in a class "Don't do this shit. I mean, REALLY don't do this sort of stuff." But there comes a time when the student becomes responsible for the actions which they choose to undertake. I knew a guy who passed a much more rigorous set of clearances than I had - he was directly involved in assembly and maintenance of nuclear weapons. I was assigned to another base for a couple of years, then went back to visit old friends - found out that he'd started ripping off tools and first-aid kits out of the assembly facility. Nothing classified as such, just petty theft. He spent time in Leavenworth and got a DD. Did the AF teach him to be a petty thief?
J.
Posted by JLawson | January 9, 2006 7:51 AM
Posted on January 9, 2006 07:51