T1B

Diogenes wrote:

Dinsdale wrote:

Variable wrote: And do what, wait for another 9/11?

The Iraq/9-11 connection is always the last gasp of someone flailing.

The Iraq/9-11 disconnect is the first feeble attempt of the clueless.

Ever hear of Salmon Pak, genius?

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

America had intelligence information of training classes in an old airliner in Salmon Pak, south of Baghdad. At this site, terrorists were trained how to hijack airliners using only short knives. Had this intelligence information been fused with information from the FBI and FAA, America might have had the opportunity to thwart the 9-11 attacks.

At Salman Pak
Iraq’s terror ties.


Confirming that Operation Iraqi Freedom is an integral part of the war on terror, soldiers of the 7th Marine Regiment destroyed a suspected terrorist camp early Sunday en route to Baghdad. Located a mile east of the Tigris River, the Salman Pak base was exactly where U.S. terrorism experts and Iraqi defectors said it would be.

Ex-CIA Director James Woolsey, Clinton Iraqi policy adviser Laurie Mylroie, former Iraqi nuclear chief Khidir Hamza and émigré Iraqi army colonel Sabah Khodada are among those who say that Saddam Hussein used Salman Pak to instruct terrorists in bomb making, assassination, and hijacking (see "The 9/11 Connection"). Key to this objective was an airplane fuselage in which Islamic extremists honed their air-piracy skills. Initial reports from the camp vindicate those suspicions.

"The rusted shell of an old passenger jet sat out in a field, its tail broken off," an Associated Press dispatch reported Sunday. "Good for hijacking practice, U.S. Marines speculated Sunday as they examined an Iraqi training base about 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Baghdad."

Nessman added: "The passenger plane's sun-bleached fuselage lay alone in a large, barren field. A fire engine sat at one intersection. Elsewhere, the twisted metal wreck of a double-decker bus stood near three decrepit green and red train cars." These latter details bolster charges that Salman Pak also showed terrorists how to seize buses and trains.

The Marines shelled then entered Salman Pak — named after a 7th Century Persian convert to Islam who was the prophet Mohammed's barber — after it was discussed by Egyptian and Sudanese fighters caught elsewhere in Iraq.

As the U.S. Army's stoic and crisp Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told reporters Sunday, "The nature of the work being done by some of those people that we captured, their inferences to the type of training that they received, all of these things give us the impression that there was terrorist training that was conducted at Salman Pak."

American GIs also searched the facility's buildings.

"We're trying to find anything of intel value, to see how they train and possibly their terrorist tactics," Gunnery Sergeant Scott Stalker — the 7th Marines' 28-year-old intelligence chief from Baypoint, California — told the AP.

As soldiers press on to victory, analysts now will sift through Salman Pak and its papers to find dots to connect to terrorist activities and groups, possibly including al Qaeda. A key question for them is whether the September 11 conspirators practiced their hijacking chops at this base.

"We'll pull documents out of it and see what the documents say, if there's any links or indications," General Brooks said. "We'll look and see if there's any persons that are recovered that may not be Iraqi. All of that is detailed and deliberate work that happens after the fact."

DrDetroit wrote:Wow, one google search and I find...

http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/ ... larsen.htm

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

America had intelligence information of training classes in an old airliner in Salmon Pak, south of Baghdad. At this site, terrorists were trained how to hijack airliners using only short knives. Had this intelligence information been fused with information from the FBI and FAA, America might have had the opportunity to thwart the 9-11 attacks.

Right wing blog there, eh, B?

So, either you lied about what you found re: Salmon Pak or you...well...you lied.

"The rusted shell of an old passenger jet sat out in a field, its tail broken off," an Associated Press dispatch reported Sunday. "Good for hijacking practice, U.S. Marines speculated Sunday as they examined an Iraqi training base about 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Baghdad."

As soldiers press on to victory, analysts now will sift through Salman Pak and its papers to find dots to connect to terrorist activities and groups, possibly including al Qaeda. A key question for them is whether the September 11 conspirators practiced their hijacking chops at this base.

"We'll pull documents out of it and see what the documents say, if there's any links or indications," General Brooks said. "We'll look and see if there's any persons that are recovered that may not be Iraqi. All of that is detailed and deliberate work that happens after the fact."

Saddam’s Terror Ties
Iraq-war critics ignore ample evidence.

As President Bush more robustly promotes his Iraq policy, he should confront directly those who dismiss Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorism and, thus, belittle a key rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Bush's critics employ a flimsy argument that nonetheless enjoys growing appeal among a largely hostile press corps. Since Hussein did not order the September 11 attacks — the fuzzy logic goes — he has no ties to terrorists, especially al Qaeda. Therefore, the Iraq war was bogus, and Bush should be defeated.

"Iraq was not a breeding ground for terrorism. Our invasion has made it one," said Senator Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.) on October 16. "We were told Iraq was attracting terrorists from al Qaeda. It was not...We should never have gone to war in Iraq when we did, in the way we did, for the false reasons we were given."

West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller, the Senate Intelligence Committee's ranking Democrat, told the Los Angeles Times that Iraq's alleged al Qaeda ties were "tenuous at best and not compelling." In a September 16 editorial, the Times slammed Vice President Dick Cheney for making "sweeping, unproven claims about Saddam Hussein's connections to terrorism." On August 7, former vice president Al Gore stated reassuringly: "The evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama bin Laden at all."

Bush and his national-security team should repeatedly devote entire speeches and publications — complete with documents, names, and visuals, including photographs of terrorists and their innocent victims — to remind Americans and the world that Baathist Iraq was a general store for terrorists, complete with cash, training, lodging, and even medical attention.

The evidence for Hussein's cooperation with and support for global terrorists is abundant and increasing. Recall, for instance:

Hussein paid bonuses of up to $25,000 to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers. "President Saddam Hussein has recently told the head of the Palestinian political office, Faroq al-Kaddoumi, his decision to raise the sum granted to each family of the martyrs of the Palestinian uprising to $25,000 instead of $10,000," Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, declared at a Baghdad meeting of Arab politicians and businessmen on March 11, 2002, Reuters reported two days later.

Mahmoud Besharat, who the White House says dispensed these funds across the West Bank, gratefully said: "You would have to ask President Saddam why he is being so generous. But he is a revolutionary and he wants this distinguished struggle, the intifada, to continue." Between Aziz's announcement and the March 20 launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 28 homicide bombers injured 1,209 people and killed 223 more, including at least eight Americans.

According to the State Department's May 21, 2002 "Patterns of Global Terrorism," the Abu Nidal Organization, the Arab Liberation Front, Hamas, the Kurdistan Worker's party, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization and the Palestinian Liberation Front all operated offices or bases in Hussein's Iraq. Hussein's hospitality towards these mass murderers placed him in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, which prohibited him from giving safe harbor to or otherwise supporting terrorists.

Coalition forces have found alive and well key terrorists who enjoyed Hussein's hospitality. Among them was Abu Abbas, mastermind of the October 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking and murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Manhattan retiree who Abbas's men rolled, wheelchair and all, into the Mediterranean. Khala Khadr al-Salahat, accused of designing the bomb that destroyed Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988 (259 killed on board, 11 dead on the ground), also lived in Baathist Iraq.

Before fatally shooting himself four times in the head on August 16, 2002, as Baghdad claimed, Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal had resided in Iraq since 1999. As the AP's Sameer N. Yacoub reported on August 21, 2002, the Beirut office of the Abu Nidal Organization said he entered Iraq "with the full knowledge and preparations of the Iraqi authorities." Nidal's attacks in 20 countries killed at least 275 people and wounded some 625 others. Among other atrocities, ANO henchmen bombed a TWA airliner over the Aegean Sea in 1974, killing all 88 people on board.

Coalition troops destroyed at least three terrorist training camps including a base near Baghdad called Salman Pak. It featured a passenger-jet fuselage where numerous Iraqi defectors reported that foreign terrorists were instructed how to hijack airliners with utensils. (The Bush administration should bus a few dozen foreign correspondents and their camera crews from the bar of Baghdad's Palestine Hotel to Salman Pak for a guided tour. Network news footage of that ought to open a few eyes.)

As for Hussein's supposedly imaginary ties to al Qaeda, consider these disturbing facts:

The Philippine government expelled Hisham al Hussein, the second secretary at Iraq's Manila embassy, on February 13, 2003. Cell-phone records indicate that the diplomat had spoken with Abu Madja and Hamsiraji Sali, leaders of Abu Sayyaf, just before and just after this al Qaeda-allied Islamic militant group conducted an attack in Zamboanga City. Abu Sayyaf's nail-filled bomb exploded on October 2, 2002, injuring 23 individuals and killing two Filipinos and U.S. Special Forces Sergeant First Class Mark Wayne Jackson, age 40. As Dan Murphy wrote in the Christian Science Monitor last February 26, those phone records bolster Sali's claim in a November 2002 TV interview that the Iraqi diplomat had offered these Muslim extremists Baghdad's help with joint missions.

Journalist Stephen F. Hayes reported in July that the official Babylon Daily Political Newspaper published by Hussein's eldest son, Uday, ran what it called a "List of Honor." The paper's November 14, 2002, edition gave the names and titles of 600 leading Iraqis, including this passage: "Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan." That name, Hayes wrote, matches that of Iraq's then-ambassador to Islamabad.

Carter-appointed federal appeals judge Gilbert S. Merritt discovered this document in Baghdad while helping Iraq rebuild its legal system. He wrote in the June 25 Tennessean that two of his Iraqi colleagues remember secret police agents removing that embarrassing edition from newsstands and confiscating copies of it from private homes. The paper was not published for the next ten days. Judge Merritt theorized that the "impulsive and somewhat unbalanced" Uday may have showcased these dedicated Baathists to "make them more loyal and supportive of the regime" as war loomed.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, formerly the director of an al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan, fled to Iraq after being injured as the Taliban fell. He received medical care and convalesced for two months in Baghdad. He then opened a terrorist training camp in northern Iraq and arranged the October 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan.

While Iraqi Ramzi Yousef, ringleader of the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot, fled the U.S. on a Pakistani passport, he arrived here on an Iraqi passport.

Author Richard Miniter reported September 25 on TechCentralStation: "U.S. forces recently discovered a cache of documents in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, that show Iraq gave Mr. Yasin both a house and a monthly salary." Indiana-born, Iraqi-reared al Qaeda member Abdul Rahman Yasin was indicted for mixing the chemicals in the bomb that exploded beneath the World Trade Center, killing six and injuring some 1,000 New Yorkers.

Along Iraq's border with Syria, U.S. troops captured Farouk Hijazi, Hussein's former ambassador to Turkey and suspected liaison to al Qaeda. Under interrogation, Hijazi "admitted meeting with senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam's behest in 1994."

While sifting through the Mukhabarat's bombed ruins last April 26, the Toronto Star's Mitch Potter, the London Daily Telegraph's Inigo Gilmore and their translator discovered a memo in the intelligence service's accounting department. Dated February 19, 1998 and marked "Top Secret and Urgent," it said the agency would pay "all the travel and hotel expenses inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden, the Saudi opposition leader, about the future of our relationship with him, and to achieve a direct meeting with him." The memo's three references to bin Laden were obscured crudely with correction fluid.

Despite the White House's inexplicable insistence to the contrary, tantalizing clues suggest Saddam Hussein might not have shared the world's shock when fireballs erupted from the Twin Towers.

Recall that his Salman Pak terror camp taught terrorists air piracy on an actual jet fuselage.

On January 5, 2000, Ahmad Hikmat Shakir — an Iraqi airport greeter reportedly dispatched from Baghdad's embassy in Malaysia — welcomed Khalid al Midhar and Nawaz al Hamzi to Kuala Lampur and escorted them to a local hotel where these September 11 hijackers met with 9/11 conspirators Ramzi bin al Shibh and Tawfiz al Atash. Five days later, according to Stephen Hayes, Shakir disappeared. He was arrested in Qatar on September 17, 2001, six days after al Midhar and al Hamzi slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, killing 216 people. On his person and in his apartment, authorities discovered papers tying him to the 1993 WTC plot and "Operation Bojinka," al Qaeda's 1995 plan to blow up 12 jets over the Pacific at once.

The Czech Republic stands by its claim that 9/11 leader Mohamed Atta met in Prague in April 2001 with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim an-Ani, an Iraqi diplomat/intelligence agent. He was expelled two weeks after the suspected meeting with Atta for apparently hostile surveillance of Radio Free Europe's Prague headquarters, from which American broadcasts to Iraq emanate.

Clinton-appointed Manhattan federal judge Harold Baer ordered Hussein and his ousted regime to pay $104 million in damages to the families of George Eric Smith and Timothy Soulas, both killed in the Twin Towers along with 2,790 others. "I conclude that plaintiffs have shown, albeit barely, 'by evidence satisfactory to the court' that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al Qaeda," Baer ruled. An airtight case? No, but sufficient evidence tied Hussein to 9/11 and secured a May 7 federal judgment against him.

If one has the time or professional duty to connect these dots, a portrait emerges of Saddam Hussein as sugar daddy to global terrorists, including al Qaeda and perhaps the 9/11 conspirators. Why won't Team Bush paint this picture? One administration communications specialist told me the government is bashful on this front because these links are difficult to prove. Yes, but prosecuting the informational battle in the war on terror is not like prosecuting a Mafia don, with wiretaps, hidden cameras and deep-cover "stool pigeons." Evidence of terrorist ties can be even more shadowy than a Cosa Nostra whack job. While this makes metaphysical proof elusive, the White House and relevant agencies owe it to America's national security to highlight what they know about Saddam Hussein and terrorism, even if some of the evidence against him is only circumstantial.

Assuming he wishes to sway domestic and global opinion, President Bush and his administration should guide Americans and the world through the sometimes-murky data and identify the patterns and conclusions that arise. While Saddam Hussein never may endure a courtroom cross-examination, plenty already exists in the public record (and surely more should be declassified) to confirm that his ouster, the liberation of Iraq and its current rehabilitation were and are necessary phases of the war on terror. The president and his top advisers should present the case, not haphazardly, but systematically and in as comprehensive, well-documented, and well-illustrated a fashion as their vast resources will allow.

BSmack wrote:

DrDetroit wrote:Wow, one google search and I find...

http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/ ... larsen.htm

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

America had intelligence information of training classes in an old airliner in Salmon Pak, south of Baghdad. At this site, terrorists were trained how to hijack airliners using only short knives. Had this intelligence information been fused with information from the FBI and FAA, America might have had the opportunity to thwart the 9-11 attacks.

Right wing blog there, eh, B?

So, either you lied about what you found re: Salmon Pak or you...well...you lied.

Obviously you did more than enter Salmon Pak and hit enter. Props to you I guess for finding one peice of testimony from some spook that referenced Salmon Pak ONCE.

:roll:

BTW: Why is it that finding a credible document on Salmon Pak is like trying to find a Hummer in a Cracker Jack box?

I Googled Salmon Pak. All I found were a bunch of right wing bloggers passing notes back and forth in class.

DrDetroit wrote:Nice try at diverting the discussion, ass.

You posted earlier:

BTW: Why is it that finding a credible document on Salmon Pak is like trying to find a Hummer in a Cracker Jack box?

and

I Googled Salmon Pak. All I found were a bunch of right wing bloggers passing notes back and forth in class.

That is what I was responding to. I also googled Salmon Pak and came up with congressional testimony referring to the training camp.

I also called up two articles that I had read before.

Now, if you click on the link to the second article I posted, there are numerous links in that article...that not only provide information re: Salmon Pak, specifically, but also Iraq's ties to terrorism, generally.

In any case, I was merely responding to your bullshit blustering about not being able to find anything "credible."

BTW: Your other story is even more laughable.

I assume that the US millitary doesn't have any old aircraft laying around that they use for SWAT/counter terrorist operations?

And apparently they must not have FOUND anything. Because you have to think that if they HAD found anything it would have been banner, front page, all over the fucking Drudge Report news.

BSmack wrote: OK, I forgot I was playing to the "too stupid to fuck" crowd. So I'll rephrase...

Why is it that finding a credible document linking Salmon Pak to actual terrorist training is like trying to find a Hummer in a Cracker Jack box?

And no, they are not laying. They are also not offering any evidence, merely speculation.

Salman Pak / Al Salman

Former Iraqi military officers have described a highly secret terrorist training facility at Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations.

The Salman Pak biological warfare facility was located on a peninsula caused by a bend in the Tigris river, approximately five kilometers (km) from the arch located in the town of Salman Pak. The facility area comprised more than 20 square km, and might have been known as a farmers (or agricultural) experimentation center. The peninsula was fenced off and patrolled by a large guard force. Immediately inside and to the east of the fence line were two opulent villas: the larger built for Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the other for his half-brother, Barazan al-Tikriti. A main paved road ran through the center of the Salman Pak facility/peninsula. [GulfLINK]

Plans were made in the mid-1980's to develop the Salman Pak site into a secure biological warfare research facility. Dr Rihab Taha, head of a small biological weapons research team, continued to work with her team at al-Muthanna until 1987 when it moved to Salman Pak, which was under the control of the Directorate of General Intelligence.

Located at the facility are several buildings. The probable main research building at the site is a modern building, composed of twenty four rooms, housing a major BW research facility. Using current technology the research area alone had sufficient floor space to accommodate several continuous-flow or batch fermenters that could produce daily sufficient anthrax bacteria to lethally assault hundreds of square kilometers. Adjacent to the research building is a storage area which contains four munitions type storage bunkers with lightning arrestors. Two of these bunkers have facilities for storage of temperature sensitive biological material. Approximately a mile down the road from the research area is a complex US intelligence believed to be an engineering area. One building in this complex was thought to contain a fermentation pilot plant capable of scale up production of BW agents. A construction project comprising several buildings was begun in early 1989 adjacent to the engineering area, and was near completion in 1990. This new complex was assessed as a pharmaceutical production plant. As such, this facility would have an extensive capability for biological agent production. [GulfLINK]

Salman Pak, located 30-40 km SE of Baghdad, engaged in laboratory scale research on Anthrax, Botulinum toxin, Clostridium, perfringens (gas gangrene), mycotoxins, aflatoxins, and Ricin. Researchers at this site carried out toxicity evaluations of these agents and examined their growth characteristics and survivability.

Equipment-moving trucks and refrigerated trucks were observed at the Salman Pak BW facility prior to the onset of bombing, suggesting that Iraq was moving equipment or material into or out of the facility. Information obtained after the conflict revealed that Iraq had moved BW agent production equipment from Salman Pak to the Al Hakam suspect BW facility.

The Qadisiya State Establishment [aka Al-Qadsia], involved in the program to produce Al Hussein class missiles, is apparently located nearby, along with the Al-Yarmouk facility which according to some reports was associated with the chemical munitions program [and which other reports place at Yusufiyah.


Iraq told UN inspectors that Salman Pak was an anti-terror training camp for Iraqi special forces. However, two defectors from Iraqi intelligence stated that they had worked for several years at the secret Iraqi government camp, which had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995. Training activities including simulated hijackings carried out in an airplane fuselage [said to be a Boeing 707] at the camp. The camp is divided into distinct sections. On one side of the camp young, Iraqis who were members of Fedayeen Saddam are trained in espionage, assassination techniques and sabotage. The Islamic militants trained on the other side of the camp, in an area separated by a small lake, trees and barbed wire. The militants reportedly spent time training, usually in groups of five or six, around the fuselage of the airplane. There were rarely more than 40 or 50 Islamic radicals in the camp at one time.

Sabah Khodada was a captain in the Iraqi army from 1982 to 1992. He worked at what he describes as a highly secret terrorist training camp at Salman Pak (see Khodada's hand-drawn map of the camp), an area south of Baghdad. In this translated interview, conducted in association with The New York Times on Oct. 14, 2001, Khodada describes what went on at Salman Pak, including details on training hijackers. He emigrated to the U.S. in May 2001.

DrDetroit wrote:

Sabah Khodada was a captain in the Iraqi army from 1982 to 1992. He worked at what he describes as a highly secret terrorist training camp at Salman Pak (see Khodada's hand-drawn map of the camp), an area south of Baghdad. In this translated interview, conducted in association with The New York Times on Oct. 14, 2001, Khodada describes what went on at Salman Pak, including details on training hijackers. He emigrated to the U.S. in May 2001.

Now how the fuck do you know whether he was Captain in the Iraqi Army or some pencil pusher??

Well?

What was your job?

Administrational things, such as providing food, leave of absence permissions, general training. Ammunition ... providing them with ammunition when needed.

mvscal wrote:

BSmack wrote:I see Detard is working though some anger issues today. :roll:

I Googled Salmon Pak. All I found were a bunch of right wing bloggers passing notes back and forth in class.

Now fuck off.

Right wing blogs?

You mean like PBS?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... nterviews/

What a sad, desperate cunt you are.

The existence of the plane has been confirmed by U.N. inspectors.

Variable wrote:

The existence of the plane has been confirmed by U.N. inspectors.

C'mon, less selective cut-n-quote needed, thanks.

Besides, those disclaimers don't say that it has been proven false, they say that no one else has come forward to PBS for an interview to prove or disprove what was discussed about Salman Pak. Hardly the same as a stinging rebuttal.

mvscal wrote:Well, you seem to be the only one who isn't aware that Iraq was training terrorists. It's common knowledge for everyone else.

Try pulling your head out of your ass someday, dumbfuck.

Variable wrote:All spin aside, anyone who's spent time in the military would know that it's the Administration guys who know EVERYTHING. The Admin office is basically an information hub for all that goes on at a command, as they not only process all of the paperwork for schedules, supplies, etc, but officers openly discuss everything down to the boils on their asses, right in front of the Admin staff.

But, of course, as usual, what do I and others who have served in the military know. It's BSmack who's the real expert on this topic.

The culture and command structure are completely different.

But hey, I'm sure you knew that from your experience in the boiler room.

BSmack wrote:

Variable wrote:

The existence of the plane has been confirmed by U.N. inspectors.

C'mon, less selective cut-n-quote needed, thanks.

Besides, those disclaimers don't say that it has been proven false, they say that no one else has come forward to PBS for an interview to prove or disprove what was discussed about Salman Pak. Hardly the same as a stinging rebuttal.

And why wouldn't the Bush Administration be trumpeting this in the face of every anti-war protestor? Give me a break. If they had found the "smoking gun" they would have been blasting every liberal with said news 24-7.

mvscal wrote:We have photos of the camp and the plane.

We have eyewitnesses.

We have terrorist attacks in Iraq.

The former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter accompanied the journalists to Salman Pak.

He said there was obviously no terrorism training taking place there - a site he said the US was ready to go to war for.

The journalists were shown an old Iraqi plane abandoned in a field, which Mr Ritter said was used by Iraqi security forces to train for rescuing passengers from hijacked planes.

"Any nation that has an airline industry trains people to rescue those who have been on aircraft that have been hijacked," he said.

Why are you so fucking ignorant?

DrDetroit wrote:The purpose of a terror training camp is something other than training terrorists???