History
Al-Taji airfield, in the volatile Sunni Triangle, was originally an Iraqi Republican Guard base during the Saddam era. It was once a center for the manufacture of chemical weapons. UNSCOM found at Taji 6,000 empty canisters designed to be filled with chemical weapons for use in 122mm rockets.
According to the Gulf War Airpower Survey, there was a Sector Operations Center located at Al Taji. The airbase is served by a 5,500-foot-long (1,700 m) runway. Taji was also the largest tank maintenance facility in Iraq.
Taji was heavily bombed during Operation Desert Fox in which 13 different targets in the Camp were hit during the December 1998 air strikes.
The base came under American control following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Read more about this topic: Camp Taji
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history is always the same the product is always different and the history interests more than the product. More, that is, more. Yes. But if the product was not different the history which is the same would not be more interesting.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)