Salmon Pak man

Stephen Hayes just won't give up on those Iraqi documents. His latest column for the Weekly Standard details terror training operations at the notorius Salmon Pak and three other sites. This was covered by Deroy Murdock years ago, but so far we haven't seen much documentary evidence, apparently until now:

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.

That sounds pretty unambiguous. He continues:

...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...

The north Africa connection is interesting. Scroll down a few stories on this site, or check here for north African terrorists in the news. Also recall that many of the suicide jihadists flowing into Iraq come from Algeria.

The screaming question then becomes, if the docs show connections why hasn't Bush used them? Hayes offers an answer. Some in the administration believe that if they release the docs, which aren't all nefarious, it would encourage an already hostile press to cherry pick and highlight the not-so-bad stories while burying any smoking guns. One could argue similar tactics were used with both the Kay and Duelfer reports.

Apparently they've changed their minds and now feel the answer is to document dump the whole package. With a 24 hour news cycle the MSM won't have time to ponder over them very long, besides it's likely this will happen during the upcoming Alito storm.

Hayes also devotes significant comment to the argument that a secular Saddam would not have been interested in helping a fundie like Bin Laden. Many of the docs apparently refute this assertion. This should not be surprising, since we know Saddam fashioned himself as a modern Saladin, savior of pan-Arabia. He had to suck up to the fundies to execute his legacy. Or as one chap in the story said, "he used us, and we used him". And folks, that is one of the casus belli arguments put forth by Bush in 2003.

MORE 1/7/06

Doing my best, AJ. And I'm sure most of you righties have already seen this must-see video. If not, don't dare miss it.

One more thing. If it's proved that Algerians were trained in Iraq terror camps under Saddam, the anti-Iraq war establishment should be posed the following question:

"in light of the recent foiled terror attack by Algerians against America, and with definitive proof Saddam was facilitating terrorism, weren't we justified in taking out Saddam's regime even without WMDs being present? Remember, no WMDs were present in Afghanistan.