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Friday, January 06, 2006

Powerline has a preview of what Stephen Hayes's story in the Weekly Standard about the new evidence that Saddam Hussein was hosting at least three active terrorist training camps in the four years preceding our invasion of Iraq.
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.

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. Taken together, this collection could give U.S.
intelligence officials and policymakers an inside look at the activities of the former Iraqi regime in the months and years before the Iraq War.
And, as Hayes reports, there are mountains of unread documents that we haven't gone through yet. It's amazing that the government is doing more to broadcast this information. However, Hayes reports on an internal debate within the Pentagon about whether they should release this information that they have from captured Iraqi documents. That debate has kept to release, even to Congress, of information. However, it seems that the administration is finally leaning towards dumping all these documents and letting the media have a field day going through it.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:24 PM

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HOME Betsy neither necessarily uses, nor endorses, the products advertised on this site. Comments from an AP history and government teacher in Raleigh, NC. e-mail betsynewmark AT gmail.com Site Feed Wikio Your Market Research Here		Friday, January 06, 2006 Powerline has a preview of what Stephen Hayes's story in the Weekly Standard about the new evidence that Saddam Hussein was hosting at least three active terrorist training camps in the four years preceding our invasion of Iraq. 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. 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. Taken together, this collection could give U.S. intelligence officials and policymakers an inside look at the activities of the former Iraqi regime in the months and years before the Iraq War. And, as Hayes reports, there are mountains of unread documents that we haven't gone through yet. It's amazing that the government is doing more to broadcast this information. However, Hayes reports on an internal debate within the Pentagon about whether they should release this information that they have from captured Iraqi documents. That debate has kept to release, even to Congress, of information. However, it seems that the administration is finally leaning towards dumping all these documents and letting the media have a field day going through it. posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 7:24 PM \|

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Friday, January 06, 2006