Here's a sample of liberal conventional "wisdom" as explained by a gentleman named Dewayne Wickham. Writing shortly after the December 15th election in Iraq, Mr. Wickham takes pains to remind us that Iraqi embrace of the democratic process doesn't justify the invasion. It's all wrong, he says. The Invasion of Iraq was a distraction from the war on terror.
But instead of waging a worldwide war against terrorists, the Bush administration has gotten bogged down in Iraq, where the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a democratic government has become a surrogate battle for that campaign. Never mind there is no proof that Saddam's regime had anything to do with the terrorists who struck this country in 2001. Saddam, after all, Bush reminded us in a 2002 speech, was "the guy who tried to kill" his dad.
Wrong focus
Not being able to use that beef as justification for the Iraq war -- or the costly occupation that followed Saddam's ouster -- Bush began arguing the fight in Iraq is the heart of the war on terrorism.
But it seems there is new information that's come to light. According to Newsmax, the Bush Administration is about to release documentary evidence that extensive terrorist training programs were conducted by Saddam Hussein's regime between the years 1999 and 2002.
"The secret training took place primarily at three camps in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak," reports the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, who adds that the operations began two years before the 9/11 attacks and were "directed by elite Iraqi military units."
The existence of these documents, and the nature of what they describe, has been confirmed to the Standard by eleven U.S. government officials, Hayes says.
If true, the documents represent a bombshell finding that shatters the claims of Iraq war critics who have maintained for three years that Saddam Hussein had no connection whatsoever to Islamic terrorism.
Mr. Hayes described the findings in more detail in Saddam's Terror Training Camps, the Weekly Standard article mentioned in the Newsmax report.
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.
You might wonder why is it taking so long for them to make this information public. I can think of three reasons. First, there is such a mountain of documents and notes to translate and evaluate that it simply wasn't possible to do it sooner. Hayes says out of 2 million captured items, 50,000 have been thoroughly examined, and that has taken three years.
Second, the Bush Administration would probably like to be absolutely certain that there's no misunderstanding about what the documents represent. There's nothing to be gained by releasing small pieces of information as they become available, only to have them used later in the usual liberal accusation that Bush is trying to mislead the nation.
Third, Bush has a reputation as a poker player.
By reputation, the President was a very avid and skillful poker player when he was an MBA student. One of the secrets of a successful poker player is to encourage your opponent to bet a lot of chips on a losing hand. This is a pattern of behavior one sees repeatedly in George W. Bush’s political career. He is not one to loudly proclaim his strengths at the beginning of a campaign. Instead, he bides his time, does not respond forcefully, a least at first, to critiques from his enemies, no matter how loud and annoying they get. If anything, this apparent passivity only goads them into making their case more emphatically.
Has he let the Democrats push all their chips into the pot, betting on a losing strident anti-war hand? I'm baffled they would bet everything on the hope that Americans are unconcerned about national defense, but it appears they have. And it appears President Bush has been content to let them do it -- up to now anyway. Now that there's been an apparently criminal disclosure of top secret surveillance of al Qaeda communications, Mr. Bush has decided to raise the bet and call. It's hard to imagine 2006 will be a good year for Democrats.
I suspect that later this year someone is going to trip over a warehouse full of Saddam's WMD.
That would probably good last nail in the Dem's casket.
OK they can always claim that when we attacked that we didn't know that he was training terrorists, so this evidence doesn't count, and that it doesn't justify the war, as it was for WMD...
Posted by: Fred Fry | January 10, 2006 at 10:13 AM
Whether they trip over a warehouse full, or find the ledger sheet that says where the weapons were sent while good buddy Hans was pantomiming a search, we can hope the result will be the same -- the last nail.
Mainstream press priorities are fascinating. This is a story that has no importance, but they'll publish classified information about surveilance of terrorists.
Posted by: Tom Bowler | January 10, 2006 at 11:12 AM
"I suspect that later this year someone is going to trip over a warehouse full of Saddam's WMD."
It diddn't happen nor will it happen. Even the Old Tuiawatha "WMD" site has been beaten to death.
Oh, and the NewsMax Article cited:
claims of Iraq war critics who have maintained for three years that Saddam Hussein had no connection whatsoever to Islamic terrorism.
(Emphasis mine)
possible -but no connection 9/11.
Posted by: DDT | January 10, 2006 at 01:22 PM
DDT, Your emphasis on Islamic terrorism strikes me as just so much hair splitting. No doubt signs posted at the entrances to terror training camps read, "Muslims need not apply."
I confess to some puzzlement on the lefty Democrat defense of Saddam Hussein. It's really a remarkable turn of events that had him as a threat to the civilized world in 1998 and a model world citizen by 2003.
And finally, why do you cling to the notion that there needed to be a direct connection to 9/11?
Posted by: Tom Bowler | January 10, 2006 at 03:20 PM