Iraq's Area 51?

Hello there....this is my first post.....

My cousin's husband is a Marine who is over in Iraq right now. He is currently stationed at Camp Taqaddam (as reported by USMC.mil so it's not much of a secret, according to him) which he says is 35 miles west of Baghdad between Al Fallujah and Ar Ramadi. They're at an old airbase that was built by the British in the early 30's. He says it was bombed heavily during the first Gulf War and hasn't been used much since then.

Here is the part of his e-mail that interested me: "What is interesting is that this base became sort of the "Area 51" of Iraq as people herding sheep to[sic] close would never be seen again etc." Now, I'm not exactly sure what this is supposed to mean, since people don't usually disappear around Area 51, from my knowlegde (unless they cross the boundry and the Cammo Dudes drag em away

I don't have direct communication with my cousin's husband, which is just as well because he probably wouldn't answer any of my questions anyway, so I can't get clarification on this comment.

He also mentioned that there are old Migs and other Soviet aircraft buried in the sand, and a Yahoo search of "Taqaddam" brought up a few newspaper articles about the planes. No one really knows why the planes are buried in the sand, either. I don't know if this is related to the fact that he called it the Area 51 of Iraq, but I thought it was worth sharing.

Anyone else know anything, or have any insight to this base or his claims?

i'd say that they were either captured by some of saddam's men or the insurgents. i doubt that iraq has the money to make their own area 51

Here are some interesting images of the Al Taqqadum Airfield. I spent some time in the sandbox (in KSA) myself, and was provided this little gem in my inbox from a pal (originally this was power point.)

paulcouture.com...

I like to point this out to folks that still claim there could be no WMD in Iraq, because it's pretty easy to bury almost anything in the middle of the desert. I've heard stories of guys after Desert Storm burying bombs and missiles in the Saudi and Kuwaiti desert because it was faster than packing them up so they could get home sooner.