Hayes reports on the Saddam--terrorists connection

Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. For years, he has written about the connection between Saddam Hussein and terrorists.

Today, Hayes published a summary based on some new information:

"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." (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/550kmbzd.asp)

I was familiar with the training camps at Salman Park but had not heard of Samarra and Ramadi. There is also evidence that Iraq was paying money to the families of terrorists blowing up Israelis at restaurants and shops. Hussein was a terrorist running a rogue state.

Time will show that Pres. Clinton and VP Gore were right about Iraq. It's a shame that today's liberals are so angry at the 2000 election that they have chosen to ignore what their own leaders used to say.