Tel-Chai Nation: Saddam's terrorist training bases

The Weekly Standard (via IRIS Blog and Austin Bay Blog) presents another very good reason why the dictatorship of Saddam had to be brought down:

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.

One important note that should be made though is that Saddam, whatever way he ran his vicious and vile dictatorship, was NOT a secularist, even if Iraq wasn't literally run under Shari'a law, besides the fact that he kept a Koran with him during his trial hearings. Thus, that's one more flaw in the arguments being made by lot of anti-warrists and moonbats.

Continue reading the whole article by Stephen Hayes for more.

Also available at Adam's Blog, Don Surber, The Mudville Gazette, Stop the ACLU. Others on the subject include Michelle Malkin, The Strata-Sphere, Right Wing Nut House, Right-Winged, Macmind, SoCal Pundit, Iowa Voice, Fullosseous Flap's Dental Blog, No Oil for Pacifists, The Larsonian, Small Town Veteran, Sister Toldjah, Preaching Politics, Captain's Quarters, Isaac Schrodinger, No End but Victory, Getting Elected Blogline, Conservababes, ShrinkWrapped, NoisyRoom.Net, Severe Writer's Block, Zero Point, Yippee Ki-Yay, Gina Cobb, Brutally Honest, Rightank, Rhymes With Right, Inaniloquent.Com, Crossing the Rubicon, Flopping Aces, Generation Why, Right Minded, People Covered in Fish, Clark Mountain Musings, The Unalienable Right, CrosSwords, Bear to the Right, Suitably Flip.

Valentines for Soldiers/Supporting our Troops

Send a Valentine to a soldier in Iraq!

Visit www.operationaBitofHome.com, and click on the big red heart. We will send a valentine to a soldier in your name with your Valentines message. We are fundraising to send more boxes to the Freedom Rest R&R Facility in Iraq. Valentines are $1.00, but you can give more!

You can no longer send any mail to "ANY SOLDIER" it is destroyed as a security risk., We have a military distributuion point in Iraq where your Valentines will reach thousands of troops.

Background

While my wife was in Iraq, I started Operation: A Bit of Home. My wife called me and told me she had to put on 80 lbs. of battle gear, pick up her rifle, and walk 2 miles in 140 degree heat to buy soap and tampons and toothpaste. She told me that the government does not supply any sanitary or entertainment items to our troops. I decided that I would not have my wife doing that. I started shipping boxes to her unit in Iraq, in large quantities.

One day I got a phone call from a place in Baghdad called Freedom Rest. They stated they were the only R&R facility in Iraq for our troops. They get soldiers that have been in combat, on convoys, or high stress dangerous situations and give them 3 days and nights of R&R, good food, a pool, games, a soft bed and goodies. They process hundreds of soldiers in-and-out each day. By supplying hygiene, snack and entertainment items to Freedom Rest, we have directly affected the lives of over 23,000 soldiers.

They told me the government provides basic foods, linens etc., but all hygiene, snack and entertainment items come from donations, and asked if I could help. I am one of the few groups that actually have been asked to send supplies.

I know there are a lot of charities for the troops out there, but these facts set us apart from the rest:

1. We supply a facility for stressed troops, not individuals. We have eliminated the problem of NCO and officers hording the boxes. We do not send things to the same troops over and over,

2. Our website tells people how to send their own boxes, how to fill out the US Postal forms, gives packing tips and lists of needed items, and most importantly, we give out the address to send it to. We do not post names of individual soldiers, a very dangerous thing to do. If Al Qaeda knows where a National Guard unit is from, and has names, they could potentially find and endanger soldier’s families just by using a phone book!

3. Although the website does accept donations from folks who want us to do all the work, we encourage people to do it themselves, give them the tools, and hope to encourage a sense of civic pride. We do civic presentations and assist groups in completing their “Public Service” obligations.

4. We don’t sell a bunch of overpriced “Boxes” like others do.

We are working with several organizations to help them develop their own programs.

I could go on forever, but if you visit our website, or Google Us, you will find we are legitimate.

A short mention on people’s blogs could do more for us than months of our pounding the streets and working the phones. A link on your mail list or your homepage would work wonders also.

Please visit our website, google us, and tell your friends about us. Every dime of donations goes to shipping and buying needed items. No one is paid, we have no overhead, and we care about the troops. We continue to send even when donations are thin using our personal Credit Cards.

Thank you and please visit www.OperationaBitofHome.com

Supporting the troops means more than placing a yellow ribbon on your car.

Thanks for your support

Ken Meyer
Founder
Operation: A Bit of Home