The “DOCEX” Project
Saddam’s Terror Training Camps – Where Are They Now?
The Former Iraqai 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.”
This is a rather long article – - but a must read!
If there were any doubt as to why we were more than “justified” to go into Iraq – - this will clear that up.
The Dems and Saddam Lovers of the world want us all to believe he was not connected to terrorism and was just some down to earth nice guy of a dictator – but then these same Dems and Saddam Lovers also believe Al Gore invented the internet – - go figure.
Continue reading the article HERE
January 9, 2006 - 01:52 AM on January 9th, 2006
For anyone to believe that because Saddam was a secularist he wouldn’t support radical Islamic terrorists is just plain foolish. While he might not agree with them, they would have common enemies – THE US and Israel. It’s been a simple stratagem of warfare for centuries that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Radical Islamists gave Saddam something he might not have had otherwise – a way to attack the west without any possibility of retaliation. It’s called plausible deniability. Every government hires outside agents to do things that actual government employees can not do in order to prevent the action from being traced back to the government. The difference here is that instead of paying them in briefcases filled with unmarked bills or wire transfers to numbered Swiss accounts, Saddam could get them to act unwittingly in his behalf for solely ideological reasons.
January 9, 2006 - 09:23 AM on January 9th, 2006
As they did in Oklahoman City…..
January 9, 2006 - 09:23 AM on January 9th, 2006
As they did in Oklahoma City…..
June 18, 2009 - 01:48 PM on June 18th, 2009
This story is going to resurface…I have been digging deeper on it.