www.worldthreats.com/middle_east/terror_training_camps.htm

This article originally appeared at
The Weekly Standard

Saddam's terror training camps
What the documents captured from the former Iraqi regime reveal --
and why they should all be made public.
by Stephen F. Hayes

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.

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.

The discovery of the information on jihadist training camps in Iraq would seem to have two major consequences: It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and U.S. intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals, any more than such jihadists would work with an infidel like the Iraqi dictator. It also reminds us that valuable information remains buried in the mountain of documents recovered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years.

Nearly three years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, only 50,000 of these 2 million "exploitable items" have been thoroughly examined. That's 2.5 percent. Despite the hard work of the individuals assigned to the "DOCEX" project, the process is not moving quickly enough, says Michael Tanji, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who helped lead the document exploitation effort for 18 months. "At this rate," he says, "if we continue to approach DOCEX in a linear fashion, our great-grandchildren will still be sorting through this stuff."

Most of the 50,000 translated documents relate directly to weapons of mass destruction programs and scientists, since David Kay and his Iraq Survey Group--who were among the first to analyze the finds--considered those items top priority. "At first, if it wasn't WMD, it wasn't translated. It wasn't exploited," says a former military intelligence officer who worked on the documents in Iraq.

"We had boxloads of Iraqi Intelligence records--their names, their jobs, all sorts of detailed information," says the former military intelligence officer. "In an insurgency, wouldn't that have been helpful?"

How many of those unexploited documents might help us better understand the role of Iraq in supporting transregional terrorists? How many of those documents might provide important intelligence on the very people--Baathists, former regime officials, Saddam Fedayeen, foreign fighters trained in Iraq--that U.S. soldiers are fighting in Iraq today? Is what we don't know literally killing us?

ON NOVEMBER 17, 2005, Michigan representative Pete Hoekstra wrote to John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence. Hoekstra is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He provided Negroponte a list of 40 documents recovered in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan and asked to see them. The documents were translated or summarized, given titles by intelligence analysts in the field, and entered into a government database known as HARMONY. Most of them are unclassified.

For several weeks, Hoekstra was promised a response. He finally got one on December 28, 2005, in a meeting with General Michael Hayden, principal deputy director of national intelligence. Hayden handed Hoekstra a letter from Negroponte that promised a response after January 1, 2006. Hoekstra took the letter, read it, and scribbled his terse response. "John--Unacceptable." Hoekstra told Hayden that he would expect to hear something before the end of the year. He didn't.

"I can tell you that I'm reaching the point of extreme frustration," said Hoekstra, in a phone interview last Thursday. His exasperated tone made the claim unnecessary. "It's just an indication that rather than having a nimble, quick intelligence community that can respond quickly, it's still a lumbering bureaucracy that can't give the chairman of the intelligence committee answers relatively quickly. Forget quickly, they can't even give me answers slowly."

On January 6, however, Hoekstra finally heard from Negroponte. The director of national intelligence told Hoekstra that he is committed to expediting the exploitation and release of the Iraqi documents. According to Hoekstra, Negroponte said: "I'm giving this as much attention as anything else on my plate to make this work."

Other members of Congress--including Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and Senators Rick Santorum and Pat Roberts--also demanded more information from the Bush administration on the status of the vast document collection. Santorum and Hoekstra have raised the issue personally with President Bush. This external pressure triggered an internal debate at the highest levels of the administration. Following several weeks of debate, a consensus has emerged: The vast majority of the 2 million captured documents should be released publicly as soon as possible.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has convened several meetings in recent weeks to discuss the Pentagon's role in expediting the release of this information. According to several sources familiar with his thinking, Rumsfeld is pushing aggressively for a massive dump of the captured documents. "He has a sense that public vetting of this information is likely to be as good an astringent as any other process we could develop," says Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita.

The main worry, says DiRita, is that the mainstream press might cherry-pick documents and mischaracterize their meaning. "There is always the concern that people would be chasing a lot of information good or bad, and when the Times or the Post splashes a headline about some sensational-sounding document that would seem to 'prove' that sanctions were working, or that Saddam was just a misunderstood patriot, or some other nonsense, we'd spend a lot of time chasing around after it."

This is a view many officials attributed to Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Steve Cambone. (Cambone, through a spokesman, declined to be interviewed.) For months, Cambone has argued internally against expediting the release of the documents. "Cambone is the problem," says one former Bush administration official who wants the documents released. "He has blocked this every step of the way." In what is perhaps a sign of a changing dynamic within the administration, Cambone is now saying that he, like his boss, favors a broad document release.

Although Hoekstra, too, has been pushing hard for the quick release of all of the documents, he is currently focusing his efforts simply on obtaining the 40 documents he asked for in November. "There comes a time when the talking has to stop and I get the documents. I requested these documents six weeks ago and I have not seen a single piece of paper yet."

Is Hoekstra being unreasonable? I asked Michael Tanji, the former DOCEX official with the Defense Intelligence Agency, how long such a search might take. His answer: Not long. "The retrieval of a HARMONY document is a trivial thing assuming one has a serial number or enough keyword terms to narrow down a search [Hoekstra did]. If given the task when they walked in the door, one person should be able to retrieve 40 documents before lunch."

Tanji should know. He left DIA last year as the chief of the media exploitation division in the office of document exploitation. Before that, he started and managed a digital forensics and intelligence fusion program that used the data obtained from DOCEX operations. He began his career as an Army signals intelligence [SIGINT] analyst. In all, Tanji has worked for 18 years in intelligence and dealt with various aspects of the media exploitation problem for about four years.

We discussed the successes and failures of the DOCEX program, the relative lack of public attention to the project, and what steps might be taken to expedite the exploitation of the documents in the event the push to release all of the documents loses momentum.

       TWS: In what areas is the project succeeding? In what areas is the project failing?

       Tanji: The level of effort applied to the DOCEX problems in Iraq and Afghanistan to date is a testament to the will and work ethic of people in the intelligence community. They've managed to find a number of golden nuggets amongst a vast field of rock in what I would consider a respectable amount of time through sheer brute force. The flip side is that it is a brute-force effort. For a number of reasons--primarily time and resources--there has not been much opportunity to step back, think about a smarter way to solve the problem, and then apply various solutions. Inasmuch as we've won in Iraq and Saddam and his cronies are in the dock, now would be a good time to put some fresh minds on the problem of how you turn DOCEX into a meaningful and effective information-age intelligence tool.

       TWS: Why haven't we heard more about this project? Aren't most of the Iraqi documents unclassified?

       Tanji: Until a flood of captured material came rushing in after the start of Operation Enduring Freedom [in October 2001], DOCEX was a backwater: unglamorous, not terribly career enhancing, and from what I had heard always one step away from being mothballed.

       The classification of documents obtained for exploitation varies based on the nature of the way they were obtained and by whom. There are some agencies that tend to classify everything regardless of how it was acquired. I could not give you a ratio of unclassified to classified documents.

       In my opinion the silence associated with exploitation work is rooted in the nature of the work. In addition to being tedious and time-consuming, it is usually done after the shooting is over. We place a higher value on intelligence information that comes to us before a conflict begins. Confirmation that we were right (or proof that we were wrong) after the fact is usually considered history. That some of this information may be dated doesn't mean it isn't still valuable.

       TWS: The project seems overwhelmed at the moment, with a mere 50,000 documents translated completely out of a total of 2 million. What steps, in your view, should be taken to expedite the process?

       Tanji: I couldn't say what the total take of documents or other forms of media is, though numbers in the millions are probably not far off.

       In a sense the exploitation process is what it is; you have to put eyes on paper (or a computer screen) to see what might be worth further translation or deeper analysis. It is a time-consuming process that has no adequate mechanical solution. Machine translation software is getting better, but it cannot best a qualified human linguist, of which we have very few.

       Tackling the computer media problem is a lot simpler in that computer language (binary) is universal, so searching for key words, phrases, and the names of significant personalities is fairly simple. Built to deal with large-scale data sets, a forensic computer system can rapidly separate wheat from chaff. The current drawback is that the computer forensics field is dominated by a law-enforcement mindset, which means the approach to the digital media problem is still very linear. As most of this material has come to us without any context ("hard drives found in Iraq" was a common label attached to captured media) that approach means our great-grandchildren will still be dealing with this problem.

       Dealing with the material as the large and nebulous data set that it is and applying a contextual appliqué after exploitation--in essence, recreating the Iraqi networks as they were before Operation Iraqi Freedom began--would allow us to get at the most significant data rapidly for technical analysis, and allow for a political analysis to follow in short order. If I were looking for both a quick and powerful fix I'd get various Department of Energy labs involved; they're used to dealing with large data sets and have done great work in the data mining and rendering fields.

       TWS: To read some of the reporting on Iraq, one might come away with the impression that Saddam Hussein was something of a benign (if not exactly benevolent) dictator who had no weapons of mass destruction and no connections to terrorism. Does the material you've seen support this conventional wisdom?

       Tanji: I am subject to a nondisclosure agreement, so I would rather not get into details. I will say that the intelligence community has scraped the surface of much of what has been captured in Iraq and in my view a great deal more deep digging is required. Critics of the war often complain about the lack of "proof"--a term that I had never heard used in the intelligence lexicon until we ousted Saddam--for going to war. There is really only one way to obtain "proof" and that is to carry out a thorough and detailed examination of what we've captured.

       TWS: I've spoken with several officials who have seen unclassified materials indicating the former Iraqi regime provided significant support--including funding and training--to transregional terrorists, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ansar al Islam, Algeria's GSPC, and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Did you see any of this?

       Tanji: My obligations under a nondisclosure agreement prevent me from getting into this kind of detail.

Other officials familiar with the captured documents were less cautious. "As much as we overestimated WMD, it appears we underestimated [Saddam Hussein's] support for transregional terrorists," says one intelligence official.

Speaking of Ansar al Islam, the al Qaeda-linked terrorist group that operated in northern Iraq, the former high-ranking military intelligence officer says: "There is no question about the fact that AI had reach into Baghdad. There was an intelligence connection between that group and the regime, a financial connection between that group and the regime, and there was an equipment connection. It may have been the case that the IIS [Iraqi Intelligence Service] support for AI was meant to operate against the [anti-Saddam] Kurds. But there is no question IIS was supporting AI."

The official continued: "[Saddam] used these groups because he was interested in extending his influence and extending the influence of Iraq. There are definite and absolute ties to terrorism. The evidence is there, especially at the network level. How high up in the government was it sanctioned? I can't tell you. I don't know whether it was run by Qusay [Hussein] or [Izzat Ibrahim] al-Duri or someone else. I'm just not sure. But to say Iraq wasn't involved in terrorism is flat wrong."

STILL, some insist on saying it. Since early November, Senator Carl Levin has been spotted around Washington waving a brief excerpt from a February 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency assessment of Iraq. The relevant passage reads: "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control."

Levin treats these two sentences as definitive proof that Bush administration officials knew that Saddam's regime was unlikely to work with Islamic fundamentalists and ignored the intelligence community's assessment to that effect. Levin apparently finds the passage so damning that he specifically requested that it be declassified.

I thought of Levin's two sentences last Wednesday and Thursday as I sat in a Dallas courtroom listening to testimony in the deportation hearing of Ahmed Mohamed Barodi, a 42-year-old Syrian-born man who's been living in Texas for the last 15 years. I thought of Levin's sentences, for example, when Barodi proudly proclaimed his membership in the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and again when Barodi, dressed in loose-fitting blue prison garb, told Judge J. Anthony Rogers about the 21 days he spent in February 1982 training with other members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood at a camp in Iraq.

The account he gave in the courtroom was slightly less alarming than the description of the camp he had provided in 1989, on his written application for political asylum in the United States. In that document, Barodi described the instruction he received in Iraq as "guerrilla warfare training." And in an interview in February 2005 with Detective Scott Carr and special agent Sam Montana, both from the federal Joint Terrorism Task Force, Barodi said that the Iraqi regime provided training in the use of firearms, rocket-propelled grenades, and document forgery.

Barodi comes from Hama, the town that was leveled in 1982 by the armed forces of secular Syrian dictator Hafez Assad because it was home to radical Islamic terrorists who had agitated against his regime. The massacre took tens of thousands of lives, but some of the extremists got away.

Many of the most radical Muslim Brotherhood refugees from Hama were welcomed next door--and trained--in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Spanish investigators believe that Ghasoub Ghalyoun, the man they have accused of conducting surveillance for the 9/11 attacks, who also has roots in the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, was trained in an Iraqi terrorist camp in the early 1980s. Ghalyoun mentions this Iraqi training in a 2001 letter to the head of Syrian intelligence, in which he seeks reentry to Syria despite his long affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Reaching out to Islamic radicals was, in fact, one of the first moves Saddam Hussein made upon taking power in 1979. That he did not do it for ideological reasons is unimportant. As Barodi noted at last week's hearing, "He used us and we used him."

Throughout the 1980s, including the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam cast himself as a holy warrior in his public rhetoric to counter the claims from Iran that he was an infidel. This posturing continued during and after the first Gulf war in 1990-91. Saddam famously ordered "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) added to the Iraqi flag. Internally, he launched "The Faith Campaign," which according to leading Saddam Hussein scholar Amatzia Baram included the imposition of sharia (Islamic law). According to Baram, "The Iraqi president initiated laws forbidding the public consumption of alcohol and introduced enhanced compulsory study of the Koran at all educational levels, including Baath Party branches."

Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law who defected to Jordan in 1995, explained these changes in an interview with Rolf Ekeus, then head of the U.N. weapons inspection program. "The government of Iraq is instigating fundamentalism in the country," he said, adding, "Every party member has to pass a religious exam. They even stopped party meetings for prayers."

And throughout the decade, the Iraqi regime sponsored "Popular Islamic Conferences" at the al Rashid Hotel that drew the most radical Islamists from throughout the region to Baghdad. Newsweek's Christopher Dickey, who covered one of those meetings in 1993, would later write: "Islamic radicals from all over the Middle East, Africa and Asia converged on Baghdad to show their solidarity with Iraq in the face of American aggression." One speaker praised "the mujahed Saddam Hussein, who is leading this nation against the nonbelievers." Another speaker said, "Everyone has a task to do, which is to go against the American state." Dickey continued:

   Every time I hear diplomats and politicians, whether in Washington or the capitals of Europe, declare that Saddam Hussein is a "secular Baathist ideologue" who has nothing do with Islamists or with terrorist calls to jihad, I think of that afternoon and I wonder what they're talking about. If that was not a fledgling Qaeda itself at the Rashid convention, it sure was Saddam's version of it.

In the face of such evidence, Carl Levin and other critics of the Iraq war trumpet deeply flawed four-year-old DIA analyses. Shouldn't the senator instead use his influence to push for the release of Iraqi documents that will help establish what, exactly, the Iraqi regime was doing in the years before the U.S. invasion?

Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.

You have qualified for a free bump from page 7.  

Quoted: 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.

No they didn't! Those documents were forged! Bush lied! Cheney killed people! It's all America's fault! Rice should be arrested!

Everyone knows that terrorists were training in Iraq.  The lie-berals and anarcho-libertarian isolationists try to weasel out of it by claiming that Saddam "didn't know about" or else "couldn't stop" the training.

Unfortunately this information will not matter… the Democratic Party and their accomplices in the MSM have lied so much for so long the American people believe the lies.

I browed through most of it....mostly information I knew or suspected since the begininig...But still a good and valable read.  Maybe Bill Krystol (sp) can get this onto Brit Humes show on Fox and get more people talking about it.

Anyway, the most interesting passage I saw, was

STILL, some insist on saying it. Since early November, Senator Carl Levin has been spotted around Washington waving a brief excerpt from a February 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency assessment of Iraq. The relevant passage reads: "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control."

Saddam beleived he could control everything in that country.  I don't think he had any fear of those groups he WAS supporting.

Quoted: Unfortunately this information will not matter… the Democratic Party and their accomplices in the MSM have lied so much for so long the American people believe the lies.

Don't forget their media toadies:  have you heard any of this on the 6 o'clock news?

Quoted: Quoted: Unfortunately this information will not matter… the Democratic Party and their accomplices in the MSM have lied so much for so long the American people believe the lies. Don't forget their media toadies:  have you heard any of this on the 6 o'clock news?

Are you kidding? They'll be on this Cheney binge for WEEKS!

So in the last few weeks we've discovered PROOF that Saddam had WMDs (through Georges Sada, whose book I purchased last week) and that Saddam had direct ties to terrorists.

What liberal talking point can we utterly demolish next...?

Quoted: Quoted: Unfortunately this information will not matter… the Democratic Party and their accomplices in the MSM have lied so much for so long the American people believe the lies. Don't forget their media toadies:  have you heard any of this on the 6 o'clock news?

This story broke about 3 months ago a only Fox News reported it and then only in passing... the media is not going to put anything on the air or in print that might derail their objective... which is to bring down the President.

PLease don't confuse folks with facts

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Unfortunately this information will not matter… the Democratic Party and their accomplices in the MSM have lied so much for so long the American people believe the lies. Don't forget their media toadies:  have you heard any of this on the 6 o'clock news? Are you kidding? They'll be on this Cheney binge for WEEKS!

Yea…

Yesterday Iran started uranium enrichment so they can eventually burn US to a cinder… and the big story of the day is a minor hunting accident.

Who trained Saddam?

Quoted: Who trained Saddam?

His fathers brother.

ETA: as usual it appears you will try and obfuscate the truth by passing on lies.

Quoted: Who trained Saddam?

Since Iraq was backed mostly by the Soviets during the 70s-80s I guess the Soviets trained him.

Quoted: Quoted: Who trained Saddam? Since Iraq was backed mostly by the Soviets during the 70s-80s I guess the Soviets trained him.

Guess again.

link

Let me guess, we did.

There are no absolutes in this world anymore. Alliances shift. Look how much of a freak you were when you first started posting here, Peak... We've got you somewhat straightened out...  

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Who trained Saddam? Since Iraq was backed mostly by the Soviets during the 70s-80s I guess the Soviets trained him. Guess again.

No need to guess, I KNOW I am correct, no matter what your link says.

Quoted: Quoted: 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. No they didn't! Those documents were forged! Bush lied! Cheney killed people! It's all America's fault! Rice should be arrested!

What he said.  The libtards would never acknowledge this no matter how much it was made public.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Who trained Saddam? Since Iraq was backed mostly by the Soviets during the 70s-80s I guess the Soviets trained him. Guess again. No need to guess, I KNOW I am correct, no matter what your link says.

I'm sure you're familiar with this maneuver, but WTF, I'll run it past you one more time.

1.  Stick your index fingers in your ears
2.  Yell nanananananananananana as loud as you can.

Satisfaction guaranteed!

Quoted: Let me guess, we did. There are no absolutes in this world anymore. Alliances shift. Look how much of a freak you were when you first started posting here, Peak... We've got you somewhat straightened out...

Ah, grasshopper, but there ARE absolutes.

"The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters."

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Who trained Saddam? Since Iraq was backed mostly by the Soviets during the 70s-80s I guess the Soviets trained him. Guess again. No need to guess, I KNOW I am correct, no matter what your link says. I'm sure you're familiar with this maneuver, but WTF, I'll run it past you one more time. 1.  Stick your index fingers in your ears 2.  Yell nanananananananananana as loud as you can. Satisfaction guaranteed!

I am familiar with it:  it's the standard liberal tactic.
I know the history of Iraq and of Saddam.  The fact you found some media source that says he was trained by the CIA only proves that the media is desperate for that to be true.

Quoted: Quoted: 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. No they didn't! Those documents were forged! Bush lied! Cheney killed people! It's all America's fault! Rice should be arrested!

Werd!  

Quoted: Who trained Saddam?

We did, to fight the Iranians.
But I don't understand what point your trying to make

Quoted: Quoted: Who trained Saddam? We did, to fight the Iranians. But I don't understand what point your trying to make

We didn't train him to fight the Iranians.  Nor did we arm him.  We provided him with intelligence and looked the other way while France and Germany armed him with chemical weapons.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Who trained Saddam? Since Iraq was backed mostly by the Soviets during the 70s-80s I guess the Soviets trained him. Guess again. No need to guess, I KNOW I am correct, no matter what your link says. I'm sure you're familiar with this maneuver, but WTF, I'll run it past you one more time. 1.  Stick your index fingers in your ears 2.  Yell nanananananananananana as loud as you can. Satisfaction guaranteed! I am familiar with it:  it's the standard liberal tactic. I know the history of Iraq and of Saddam.  The fact you found some media source that says he was trained by the CIA only proves that the media is desperate for that to be true.

You let him do it, hijack the thread… change the subject from something relevant to something irrelevant.

He cannot address or refute the facts presented so he has to change the subject… and we fall for it every time.

What the CIA did or did not do decades ago in a different world was not the question... don't get sucked in to that.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Who trained Saddam? Since Iraq was backed mostly by the Soviets during the 70s-80s I guess the Soviets trained him. Guess again. No need to guess, I KNOW I am correct, no matter what your link says. I'm sure you're familiar with this maneuver, but WTF, I'll run it past you one more time. 1.  Stick your index fingers in your ears 2.  Yell nanananananananananana as loud as you can. Satisfaction guaranteed!

I am sure you are familiar with this maneuver:

Link to every crackpot website you can and claim it as fact.  Gee, the UPI, CNN, Lew Rockwell, et al.

Well, I can link you to websites that show he was trained by the Nazis.

Link that disputes your bullshit.

Specifically this one disuputes your CIA bullshit.  Most of what you linked to is undocumented with only "he said, she said" bullshit.  No real proof of anything.

Saddam's Personal History

See, you can find anything you want on the internet.  This is more in line with what I have heard for the last 20 years or so.  Your CIA claim is something new, only found on leftwing websites.

Even if what you say is true, guess who was on office in the US in 1963?  DUH!

Quoted: You let him do it, hijack the thread… change the subject from something relevant to something irrelevant. He cannot address or refute the facts presented so he has to change the subject… and we fall for it every time. What the CIA did or did not do decades ago in a different world was not the question... don't get sucked in to that.

It's their standard tactic, though...and frankly, I don't see them listening to the facts.  There is little room for facts in the mind of a liberal.

Quoted: Quoted: Who trained Saddam? We did, to fight the Iranians. But I don't understand what point your trying to make

We trained the Iraqis to fight using Russian equipment and to use Russian style tactics? That makes a lot of sense.


Anyway, the connection between Saddam and all kinds of terrorists is long and well known. Hell, Princess Gate was an Iraqi operation.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Who trained Saddam? Since Iraq was backed mostly by the Soviets during the 70s-80s I guess the Soviets trained him. Guess again. No need to guess, I KNOW I am correct, no matter what your link says. I'm sure you're familiar with this maneuver, but WTF, I'll run it past you one more time. 1.  Stick your index fingers in your ears 2.  Yell nanananananananananana as loud as you can. Satisfaction guaranteed! I am sure you are familiar with this maneuver: Link to every crackpot website you can and claim it as fact.  Gee, the UPI, CNN, Lew Rockwell, et al. Well, I can link you to websites that show he was trained by the Nazis. Link that disputes your bullshit. Specifically this one disuputes your CIA bullshit.  Most of what you linked to is undocumented with only "he said, she said" bullshit.  No real proof of anything. Personal History of Saddam Hussein See, you can find anything you want on the internet.  This is more in line with what I have heard for the last 20 years or so.  Your CIA claim is something new, only found on leftwing websites. Even if what you say is true, guess who was on office in the US in 1963?  DUH!

Very good, grasshopper.  There is at least one person on arfcom that understands how to do this "debate" thing.  Now we get to the meat.  How do you weigh one source against another?  Which is more credible?

First, let's turn to the wikipedia.

In 1976, Saddam was appointed a general in the Iraqi armed forces. He rapidly became the strongman of the government. The USA government, through CIA agents, assited Saddam and his party in taking over the running of Iraq. At the time Saddam was considered as an enemy of communist and radical islamist, and even Donald Rumsfeld met with him as part of USA policies against Iran and the Soviet Union in the region. As Iraq's weak and elderly President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became increasingly unable to execute the duties of his office, Saddam began to take an increasingly prominent role as the face of the Iraqi government, both internally and externally. He soon became the architect of Iraq's foreign policy and represented the nation in all diplomatic situations and was the de facto ruler of Iraq some years before he formally came to power in 1979. He slowly began to consolidate his power over Iraq's government and the Ba'ath party. Relationships with fellow party members were carefully cultivated, and Saddam soon gained a powerful circle of support within the party.

Now it's your turn.  Substantiate your saddam/nazi claims.  

Quoted: Quoted: You let him do it, hijack the thread… change the subject from something relevant to something irrelevant. He cannot address or refute the facts presented so he has to change the subject… and we fall for it every time. What the CIA did or did not do decades ago in a different world was not the question... don't get sucked in to that. It's their standard tactic, though...and frankly, I don't see them listening to the facts.  There is little room for facts in the mind of a liberal.

It is frustrating to watch… same thing every time.

We know what he is going to do before he does it… We know he is going to reference lies to distract from the truth… and every time we bite and let him obscure the truth in fog of unrelated lies.

But you are correct he has no interest in facts.

Is there really anyone who thinks he wasn't?  


Oh.   Wait.  They are all around me.

wikipedia, the place where anyone can post anything about anything.  Not a valid source, sorry.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Who trained Saddam? Since Iraq was backed mostly by the Soviets during the 70s-80s I guess the Soviets trained him. Guess again. No need to guess, I KNOW I am correct, no matter what your link says. I'm sure you're familiar with this maneuver, but WTF, I'll run it past you one more time. 1.  Stick your index fingers in your ears 2.  Yell nanananananananananana as loud as you can. Satisfaction guaranteed! I am sure you are familiar with this maneuver: Link to every crackpot website you can and claim it as fact.  Gee, the UPI, CNN, Lew Rockwell, et al. Well, I can link you to websites that show he was trained by the Nazis. Link that disputes your bullshit. Specifically this one disuputes your CIA bullshit.  Most of what you linked to is undocumented with only "he said, she said" bullshit.  No real proof of anything. Personal History of Saddam Hussein See, you can find anything you want on the internet.  This is more in line with what I have heard for the last 20 years or so.  Your CIA claim is something new, only found on leftwing websites. Even if what you say is true, guess who was on office in the US in 1963?  DUH! Very good, grasshopper.  There is at least one person on arfcom that understands how to do this "debate" thing.  Now we get to the meat.  How do you weigh one source against another?  Which is more credible? First, let's turn to the wikipedia. In 1976, Saddam was appointed a general in the Iraqi armed forces. He rapidly became the strongman of the government. The USA government, through CIA agents, assited Saddam and his party in taking over the running of Iraq. At the time Saddam was considered as an enemy of communist and radical islamist, and even Donald Rumsfeld met with him as part of USA policies against Iran and the Soviet Union in the region. As Iraq's weak and elderly President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became increasingly unable to execute the duties of his office, Saddam began to take an increasingly prominent role as the face of the Iraqi government, both internally and externally. He soon became the architect of Iraq's foreign policy and represented the nation in all diplomatic situations and was the de facto ruler of Iraq some years before he formally came to power in 1979. He slowly began to consolidate his power over Iraq's government and the Ba'ath party. Relationships with fellow party members were carefully cultivated, and Saddam soon gained a powerful circle of support within the party. Now it's your turn.  Substantiate your saddam/nazi claims.

Go to the links provided for the Nazi FACTS.  All you have linked to is leftwing websites.  They offer very few names and no real documentation.  Hell, I could write an article saying you are a Russian spy.  It would be just as credible as anything you have linked to except for one thing:  To be a spy, one must have some backbone and intelligence.

Again, who was in power in 1963?

Besides, what happened 40 years ago is really irrelevant to the subject at hand.

DISTRACT, AND REDIRECT...

Libbie debate tactic. This thread is about Saddam training terrorists, something libbies like to say never happened.

Re-rail the thread folks. History doesn't matter in this case. We didn't create this monster.

Quoted: DISTRACT, AND REDIRECT... Libbie debate tactic. This thread is about Saddam training terrorists, something libbies like to say never happened. Re-rail the thread folks. History doesn't matter in this case. We didn't create this monster.

Please.  Get it back on track.  Sorry I disrupted things, carry on.

Quoted: First, let's turn to the wikipedia.

No, let's not, seeing as how ANYONE can post to wikipedia, with no facts to support their claims.
Now, when are you going to deal with the FACT that Saddam trained terrorists?

Quoted: Quoted: First, let's turn to the wikipedia.   No, let's not, seeing as how ANYONE can post to wikipedia, with no facts to support their claims. Now, when are you going to deal with the FACT that Saddam trained terrorists?

People with no real facts turn to wikipedia as if it is some kind of official source.

Have y'all noticed that he has yet to address the question of who was in power in 1963 when his "facts" say the CIA was helping Saddam?

Quoted: Quoted: First, let's turn to the wikipedia.   No, let's not, seeing as how ANYONE can post to wikipedia, with no facts to support their claims. Now, when are you going to deal with the FACT that Saddam trained terrorists?

OK, what sources do you trust?

And I don't dispute that Saddam trained terrorists.  No problems on that from me.

But please, name a couple sources that you would trust.  

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: First, let's turn to the wikipedia.   No, let's not, seeing as how ANYONE can post to wikipedia, with no facts to support their claims. Now, when are you going to deal with the FACT that Saddam trained terrorists? OK, what sources do you trust? And I don't dispute that Saddam trained terrorists.  No problems on that from me. But please, name a couple sources that you would trust.

If you don't dispute the fact that Saddam trained terrorists, what the fuck is your point in pointing to the fabrications about Saddam and the CIA?

Quoted: And I don't dispute that Saddam trained terrorists.  No problems on that from me.

Awesome. You've won the thread.

If you'd like to discuss other things, start a new thread.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: First, let's turn to the wikipedia.   No, let's not, seeing as how ANYONE can post to wikipedia, with no facts to support their claims. Now, when are you going to deal with the FACT that Saddam trained terrorists? OK, what sources do you trust? And I don't dispute that Saddam trained terrorists.  No problems on that from me. But please, name a couple sources that you would trust.

I don't trust single sources, for the most part, unless they are primary sources.  And even then, I need to take into consideration the motive the primary source has for providing the information in question.  When it comes to history, I need named primary sources on both sides of whatever issue we're discussing.  That means no "former intelligence analysts that didn't wish to be named" and no "former Iraqi generals who don't wish to be named."  It means "John Doe, Natl Security Advisor to President GHW Bush said," backed up by "General Mohammed Ali of the Republican Guard also said."

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: First, let's turn to the wikipedia.   No, let's not, seeing as how ANYONE can post to wikipedia, with no facts to support their claims. Now, when are you going to deal with the FACT that Saddam trained terrorists? OK, what sources do you trust? And I don't dispute that Saddam trained terrorists.  No problems on that from me. But please, name a couple sources that you would trust.   I don't trust single sources, for the most part, unless they are primary sources.  And even then, I need to take into consideration the motive the primary source has for providing the information in question.  When it comes to history, I need named primary sources on both sides of whatever issue we're discussing.  That means no "former intelligence analysts that didn't wish to be named" and no "former Iraqi generals who don't wish to be named."  It means "John Doe, Natl Security Advisor to President GHW Bush said," backed up by "General Mohammed Ali of the Republican Guard also said."

Fair enough.  Just to clarify, let's say that I find a quote from Donald Rumsfeld that he personally backed Saddam's ascent to power, and that quote is found at www.atimes.com, would you consider that to be definitive?  What sources are not credible with regards to relating quotes?  I'd say that www.rense.com would be in the "not credible" camp, do you want to add to the list?

Peak_Oil,

Please start a new thread.  This one is about how wrong the liberal democrats were wrong, yet again.

Quoted: So in the last few weeks we've discovered PROOF that Saddam had WMDs (through Georges Sada, whose book I purchased last week) and that Saddam had direct ties to terrorists. What liberal talking point can we utterly demolish next...?

1) Muslims riot in France.
2) Hamas wins the vote.
3) Muslims riot due to Danish cartoons.

Pretty much destroys lefty assumptions.

Salman Pak, terrorist training camp SE of Baghdad.

Quoted: Quoted: So in the last few weeks we've discovered PROOF that Saddam had WMDs (through Georges Sada, whose book I purchased last week) and that Saddam had direct ties to terrorists. What liberal talking point can we utterly demolish next...? 1) Muslims riot in France. 2) Hamas wins the vote. 3) Muslims riot due to Danish cartoons. Pretty much destroys lefty assumptions.

Also works AGAIN toward wrecking that whole "Religion of Peace" thing...

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Who trained Saddam? Since Iraq was backed mostly by the Soviets during the 70s-80s I guess the Soviets trained him. Guess again. No need to guess, I KNOW I am correct, no matter what your link says. I'm sure you're familiar with this maneuver, but WTF, I'll run it past you one more time. 1.  Stick your index fingers in your ears 2.  Yell nanananananananananana as loud as you can. Satisfaction guaranteed! I am sure you are familiar with this maneuver: Link to every crackpot website you can and claim it as fact.  Gee, the UPI, CNN, Lew Rockwell, et al. Well, I can link you to websites that show he was trained by the Nazis. Link that disputes your bullshit. Specifically this one disuputes your CIA bullshit.  Most of what you linked to is undocumented with only "he said, she said" bullshit.  No real proof of anything. Personal History of Saddam Hussein See, you can find anything you want on the internet.  This is more in line with what I have heard for the last 20 years or so.  Your CIA claim is something new, only found on leftwing websites. Even if what you say is true, guess who was on office in the US in 1963?  DUH! Very good, grasshopper.  There is at least one person on arfcom that understands how to do this "debate" thing.  Now we get to the meat.  How do you weigh one source against another?  Which is more credible? First, let's turn to the wikipedia. In 1976, Saddam was appointed a general in the Iraqi armed forces. He rapidly became the strongman of the government. The USA government, through CIA agents, assited Saddam and his party in taking over the running of Iraq. At the time Saddam was considered as an enemy of communist and radical islamist, and even Donald Rumsfeld met with him as part of USA policies against Iran and the Soviet Union in the region. As Iraq's weak and elderly President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became increasingly unable to execute the duties of his office, Saddam began to take an increasingly prominent role as the face of the Iraqi government, both internally and externally. He soon became the architect of Iraq's foreign policy and represented the nation in all diplomatic situations and was the de facto ruler of Iraq some years before he formally came to power in 1979. He slowly began to consolidate his power over Iraq's government and the Ba'ath party. Relationships with fellow party members were carefully cultivated, and Saddam soon gained a powerful circle of support within the party. Now it's your turn.  Substantiate your saddam/nazi claims.

Well, now that we've learned that Saddam was owned by the US, why was all his armament Soviet?

Saddam’s father was disgraced during WW2 after the Germans were defeated by the Allies in the Middle East. He was part of an Anti-British - Pro Nazi group of Pan-Arab leaders that sided with the Axis powers in the early part of World War II. "1940"

Ba’ath Party: Arab political party, in Syria and in Iraq. Its main ideological objectives are secularism, socialism, and pan-Arab unionism. Founded in Damascus in 1941 and reformed, with the name Ba'ath, in the early 1950s, it rapidly achieved political power in Syria.

A year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew Faisal II of Iraq. The Ba'athists opposed the new government, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Qassim. Saddam was shot in the leg, but managed to flee to Syria, from where he later moved to Egypt. He was sentenced to death, in absentia. In exile he attended the Cairo University School of Law.

Army officers, including some aligned with the Ba'ath party, came to power in Iraq in a military coup in 1963. However, the new government was ousted quickly, within seven to eight months torn by rife factionalism. Saddam returned to Iraq, but was imprisoned in 1964 when an anti-Ba'ath group led by Abdul Rahman Arif took power. He escaped from jail in 1967 and became one of the leading members of the party. According to many biographers, Saddam never forgot the tensions within the first Ba'athist government, namely party unity and the ruthless resolve to maintain power and programs to ensure social stability.

In July 1968 a second coup brought the Ba'athists back to power under General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a Tikriti and a relative of Saddam. The Ba'ath's ruling clique named Saddam vice-chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council and vice president of Iraq.

Saddam Hussein played a key role in the bloodless 1968 coup that brought the party to power when this guy was president:


Saddam made close ties with this guy in 1976: Anyone want to make an educated guess at who this is standing next to the young Saddam Hussein?


1979, Saddam became president after years as Iraq's security minister when a certain peanut farmer was in office:


The history of Iraq