The Sargat Training Camp & Toxins

In W. Thomas Smith, Jr.'s excellent piece on Saddam's training camps, he brought up the existence of a massive training complex at Sargat in northern Iraq. The Sargat camp was run by Ansar al Islam, a joint venture of Saddam and al Qaeda.

Some "experts" have tried to claim that Ansar al Islam was insulated from the Iraqi regime because it was in the northern Kurdish-controlled area of Iraq. But there is still plenty of evidence tying Saddam to al Qaeda's Kurdish affiliate. The NSA even intercepted a message from an Iraqi intelligence officer who was praising the group and giving it $100,000 in funding prior to the war. (Even the 9-11 Commission admitted that there were "indications" of cooperation between Saddam and al Qaeda in this matter.)

In any event, it is worth remembering what the media found at Sargat: ricin and botulinum. You don't have to take the Bush administration's word on this, just ask the folks at MSNBC. On April 4, 2003 MSNBC reported:

MSNBC.com tests reveal evidence of the deadly toxins ricin and botulinum at a laboratory in a remote mountain region of northern Iraq allegedly used as a terrorist training camp by Islamic militants with ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is conducting its own tests at the same area, but has not yet released the results, according to officials in northern Iraq.

MSNBC.COM’S TESTS were conducted over a two-day period at Sargat, an alleged terrorist training camp a mile from the Iraq-Iran border. The camp, set back in an isolated valley and surrounded by snowcapped peaks, was home to the radical Islamic militant group Ansar al-Islam, which counts among its some 700 followers scores of al-Qaida fighters.

I will write more on this later, but for now consider the following: A terrorist group that both Saddam and al Qaeda were affiliated with was producing deadly toxins in northern Iraq prior to the war.