Saddam's Terrorist Training Camps In Iraq

[Pryderi]

Did we find terrorist training camps in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak?

[enuffs_enuffs]

1. If we did...

you'd hear about it ad-infinitum. The curious lack of screaming from the rooftops is a pretty good indicator that we haven't.

[Pryderi]

3. 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.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=6550&R

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Samarra+Ramadi+Salman+Pak&btnG=Search

I can't find much, if anything that refutes the claim.

[The_Casual_Observer]

5. This has got to be bogus, otherwise it would have been widely

broadcast & used by every rw nutjob. I think that that information was obtained from the same guy that said that the 9/11 pilots trained in Iraq.

[Pryderi]

8. See my previous post

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2243469&mesg_id=2244060

http://www.cfr.org/publication/9513/

[The_Casual_Observer]

12. The council on foreign relations isn't exactly an unimpeachable

source either.

I like this one from that site: "There is no hard evidence linking Saddam to the attacks"

There isn't hard evidence that I didn't just return from the planet Mars either.

Anyway, now you are talking about some other camps in a different time frame, what are you trying to prove?

Ever since the incubator & WMD stories, I take any information like yours with 2 grains of salt.
At least I get the salt.

[Pryderi]

14. Just looking to refute a freeper. Thanks.

[Emit]

10. See post # 7 n/t

[Emit]

7. RE: Salman Pak

I recall reading this article last year:

Posted on Mon, Mar. 15, 2004
Iraqi exile group fed false information to news media
By Jonathan S. Landay and Tish Wells
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The former Iraqi exile group that gave the Bush administration exaggerated and fabricated intelligence on Iraq also fed much of the same information to leading newspapers, news agencies and magazines in the United States, Britain and Australia. A June 26, 2002, letter from the Iraqi National Congress to the Senate Appropriations Committee listed 108 articles based on information provided by the INC's Information Collection Program, a U.S.-funded effort to collect intelligence in Iraq.

~snip~

In fact, many of the allegations came from the same half-dozen defectors, weren't confirmed by other intelligence and were hotly disputed by intelligence professionals at the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department.

~snip~

The articles made numerous assertions that so far haven't been substantiated 11 months after Baghdad fell, including charges that: ... ... -Iraq trained Islamic extremists in the same hijacking techniques used in the Sept. 11 strikes and prepared them for operations against Iraq's neighbors and possibly the United States. Two senior U.S. officials said that so far no evidence has been found to substantiate the charge.

~snip~

Many of the stories noted that the information they contained couldn't be independently verified. In at least one case, the INC made a defector available to a journalist before his information had been fully reviewed by U.S. intelligence officials. The defector, an engineer, Adnan Ihsan al Haideri, claimed in a Dec. 20, 2001, New York Times article by Judith Miller that there were biological, nuclear and chemical warfare facilities under private villas, the Saddam Hussein Hospital and fake water wells around Baghdad.

~snip~

INC leader Ahmad Chalabi and other officials have insisted that the group screened all defectors as thoroughly as they could. U.S. intelligence officials have determined that virtually all of the defectors' information was marginal or useless, and that some of the defectors were fabricators or embellished the threat from Saddam.

~snip~

Some of the information, such as the charge that Iraq ran a terrorist training camp in Salman Pak, found its way into administration statements, including a Sept. 12, 2002, White House paper. The CIA and the State Department had long viewed the INC as unreliable.

~snip~

In a Nov. 11 story in the Observer of London by David Rose, Alami was quoted as saying that "the method used on 11 September perfectly coincides with the training I saw at the camp." The article said Alami was assigned to Salman Pak between 1994 and 1995. However, a Nov. 8, 2001, New York Times article said Alami worked at Salman Pak for eight years. ...
~snip~

A list of the 108 articles that the Iraqi National Congress says were based on information it supplied to news media is available on the web at www.krwashington.com.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/iraq/intelligence/11893057.htm

[Pryderi]

11. Thanks! Great article!

[madrchsod]

2. no but bush refused to bomb an el qaeda camp in northern iraq

because he thought it would undermine his quest for the spoils of iraq...
bush didn`t want Zacharie to upset this plans

[radwriter0555]

4. No. Saddam and the Iraqis were and are not terrorists.

That's it.

[Pryderi]

6. Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship provided headquarters, operating bases,

Has Iraq sponsored terrorism?

Yes. Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship provided headquarters, operating bases, training camps, and other support to terrorist groups fighting the governments of neighboring Turkey and Iran, as well as to hard-line Palestinian groups. During the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam commissioned several failed terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities. Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the State Department listed Iraq as a state sponsor of terrorism. The question of Iraq’s link to terrorism grew more urgent with Saddam’s suspected determination to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which Bush administration officials feared he might share with terrorists who could launch devastating attacks against the United States.

http://www.cfr.org/publication/9513/

[The Deacon]

9. Saddam's A Shitheel Who Stole Money & Denied Rights To His People

A case could be made on the same actions against Bush. We run a little outfit called: "The School of the Americas" where students from rightwing dictatorships in Central & South America are taught the latest torture & secret police techniques. Raygun sponsored terrorist organizations in Nicaragua & Afghanistan. He sold weapons to a State Sponsor of Terror (Iran.)

DO YOU want some other country invading us & forcing whatever leader THEY find acceptable on us?

[enuffs_enuffs]

13. And Bush has stated otherwise... then contradicted himself...

It's all bullshit. Simply bullshit.

To imply otherwise is to continually fall for the same old bullshit that fooled many people into support invading Iraq to begin with. I don't know about you but I personally don't like the taste of bullshit.