Core Of The Axis Exposed: (Moscow's aid to Baghdad has been noticed)

When a totalitarian government collapses the lies of the regime also collapse and carefully guarded secrets are exposed. Officials who are anxious to escape the death and destruction of the final days sometimes forget to clean up after themselves. Evidence of dirty deals and hidden liaisons, salvaged from the rubble of destroyed buildings, will be brought into the light of day. Ranking officials, captured by coalition troops, will naturally attempt to trade secret information for leniency and thereby reveal the regime’s foreign sources of support and supply. In this way underground relationships and deals are brought to the surface. In the case of Iraq, the duplicity of certain U.S. allies will be documented and published to the world. The core of the “axis of evil” might find itself exposed.

Iraq’s defeat is apparent. In Basra, Iraq’s second-largest town, the citizens tore down a large portrait of Saddam Hussein. They cursed the mustachioed face of the dictator, stomped on it, ground their cigarettes into it and threw the battered likeness into the river. In Baghdad the citizens are helping American troops pinpoint Republican Guard holdouts. At the same time a U.S. bomber struck a Baghdad restaurant where Saddam and his sons were allegedly meeting with top Iraqi officials to plot their escape from the city. Did they finally get Saddam? Totalitarian regimes predicate themselves on deception, provocation and misdirection, so the fate of the despot remains uncertain. Iraq’s former chief of protocol, Haitham Rashid Wahaib, recently told an Indian journalist that Saddam left Baghdad around April 2.

As these words are written, the boots of U.S. and British soldiers are tracking through Saddam’s palaces. Barrels that may contain chemical weapons have been discovered, though the Pentagon is shy about making an official announcement until tests are completed. Some observers expect that the final collapse of Iraq will come in a matter of days. Iraqi soldiers are abandoning their units, discarding their uniforms and melting back into the population. With less than 1,000 civilian deaths and less than 200 American combat fatalities to date, the humanitarian catastrophe predicted by U.S. critics has not materialized.

So, what does the collapse of Saddam’s regime signify? What are the strategic implications?

It is a rich subject, but a few key points will suffice for the present. The “axis of evil” is in disarray. It is losing one of its limbs. We may ask, in the midst of this trauma, how this loss will affect the heart and brain of the axis? Already there is talk. Russia’s role as the hidden sponsor of Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons programs is being exposed. Recent articles in major newspapers have blasted Russian duplicity. On March 27 Robert Goldberg, a writer specializing in bioterrorism, stated in a Wall Street Journal article that, “Moscow … is Saddam’s biggest supplier of chemical and bio weapons.” Goldberg explained that during the 1990s Iraq and Russia successfully packed UN inspection teams with Russian operatives. These successfully hampered attempts by UN inspectors to find Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Russia’s support for Saddam Hussein did not end there. According to Goldberg, “Russia appears to be helping Iraq build a better biological and chemical weapons program.” Goldberg added that in 1995 Russia agreed to supply Saddam Hussein with fermentation equipment for manufacturing biological weapons.

On April 3 the Washington Times published an article by Svante E. Cornell with the title, “Stop appeasing Russia.” Cornell is the deputy director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies. His article discusses the Kremlin’s duplicity and describes Russia as “a putative ally of America.” According to Cornell, Russia has falsely posed as “a key ally ever since September 11,” but in reality “Russia has covertly, but systematically, counteracted American national interests in the Middle East, as well as Central and Northwest Asia.”

According to Cornell, the Bush administration is aware of Russia’s hostile actions. These have been downplayed “to keep relations at a good level.” False appearances, however, might harm U.S. national security. So why tolerate their continuance? Cornell thinks that policy changes are in order. “It is now time to reevaluate Russia’s role,” writes Cornell, “and to end a potentially counterproductive policy of appeasement.”

The Russian Federation has been selling advanced military hardware to Iraq, and it continues to do so at a time when Iraqi soldiers are killing Americans. Last week Russia’s defense minister publicly admitted that Iraq owes Moscow billions that will never be repaid; therefore, Russia’s arms sales to Iraq are not about money. The selling of war material, on credit, to a bankrupt dictatorship on the verge of collapse is about something else. The Kremlin wants to see as many Americans die as possible. It wants the war to drag out. It wants the price of oil to skyrocket. It wants the U.S. economy to choke on rising energy costs.

Moscow’s alibi is that the transfer of GPS jamming equipment, advanced anti-tank weapons and night goggles to Iraq (via Syria) is merely the work of “private” Russian companies. But Cornell tells us that this “should not be taken as an excuse. Military industries in Russia are closely tied to the state, and it is inconceivable that such high-level equipment would be exported without government permission or supervision.” And then there is the emerging allegation that military specialists, working from the Russian embassy in Baghdad, were trying to jam incoming U.S. missiles. If anyone wants to know why Secretary of State Colin Powell demanded that the Russians leave Baghdad, and why their tardy weekend departure resulted in a firefight with Russian casualties (five wounded), the reasons are not far to find. Perhaps America’s willingness to react violently to Russian duplicity has been signaled. Last Thursday Russian President Vladimir Putin called an impromptu press conference in a belated attempt to throw cold water on the Russian media’s hate America campaign. Apparently the campaign was producing undesirable effects in Washington. One of Russia’s top Muslim clerics went so far as to declare a jihad against the United States. Of course, high-level Muslim clergymen in Russia are – in most cases – co-opted agents of the political police, just as leading Orthodox clergymen are notorious for their service to the KGB. Therefore, the jihad of Russian Muslims against America is but an absurd and indirect confession of Moscow’s enmity. Even as the Russian boot tramples Chechnya, Vladimir Putin told reporters, “I can understand those people who cannot hold back [their feelings against America]. I understand and in general agree with their opinions. They are especially understandable after you watch television footage from the front line. But at the same time I think it is ill advised to follow emotion while considering or taking any decisions.”

For a very long time it has been unfashionable to tell the truth about Russia. What Cornell revealed in his Washington Times article is “the latest and most incriminating in a long series of Russian actions that run counter to American interests.” When the Berlin wall came down, the Russian side misled the American side into thinking that Russian enmity was a thing of the past. The Kremlin misled America in order to gain sympathy, aid, technology, cash and trust. But the façade is cracking. The deception is not holding.

The communist military buildup in North Korea adds to the overall picture. As Svante Cornell explained, “Russia is also one of the few governments in the world that keeps active and rosy relations with North Korea, providing a certain sense of international legitimacy to the rogue regime of Kim Jong-Il.”

If Russia has genuinely rejected the communist path, if it has genuinely rejected totalitarian methods, then how could it continue to embrace the most oppressive communist regime on the planet? The relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang only makes sense once we realize that Russia’s outward democratic and free market pose is a deception. Even more, it is a strategic deception.

One must also look at Russia’s relationship with Iran. Russia has given nuclear technology to the ayatollahs. If you want to produce instability in the Middle East, give nuclear power to crazy religious fanatics and wait for the explosions that are sure to follow. According to Cornell, “the Bush administration suspects Russia has sold Iran uranium enrichment technology, enabling it to produce weapons-grade uranium.”

According to Cornell, “Russia is deeply involved in arming the three rogue states defined by President Bush as constituting ‘the axis of evil.’” It cannot be accidental, but intentional, that Russia supports the world’s leading terrorist states. What is also apparent, what needs to be discussed by Americans in and out of government, is the way Russia has joined with China and France to – as Cornell says – “deprive America of its leading role in world politics.”

In his March 30 column at Newsmax Dr. Alexandr Nemets advocated a change in U.S. policy toward Moscow. He called for an end to subsidies for the re-employment of former Soviet weapons specialists. Referring to this practice as “completely senseless,” Nemets correctly stated that, “Baghdad, Pyongyang, Tehran and Beijing are receiving these specialists.” In other words, American taxpayers have spent around $500 million paying for Russian scientists to teach the “axis of evil” how to build mass destruction weapons. To add insult to injury, these payments were made with the understanding that Russia’s military scientists would take the money and stay home instead of passing their knowledge to rogue states. Here we see the game as the Russians play it. They lie, cheat and swindle and we pay and pay until some fatal blow is struck.

At the same time there are Russian officials who cannot resist tipping their hand. Referring to the U.S. invasion of Iraq as “aggression,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that Russia has only two reliable allies: the Russian army and navy. The Russian defense minister further explained, “The U.S. onslaught in Iraq is mind-boggling, with a thousand flights made every day and carrier based aircraft taking off several times a day.” He further stated, with a hint of glee, that within 10 to 15 days “the Americans will run out of sea-launched cruise missiles and their aircraft carriers will use up their resources and will have to go back home for routine maintenance and replenishment.” One can almost picture the Russian defense minister licking his chops. If it’s World War III he is itching for, we know the country he has targeted. As Pravda recently explained for the benefit of the naïve and unsuspecting, "Russia still has its heavy missiles, and the country's readiness to put them in action would disillusion American officials very quickly. To crown it all, political ties with Germany and France would also lead to [our] victory."

Here is the Kremlin’s thinking for all to see. It is almost as if they never set aside Stalin’s foreign policy, which was summed up by Stalin in the following words: “The tasks of the Party in foreign policy are: (1) to utilize every contradiction and conflict among the surrounding capitalist groups and governments for the purpose of disintegrating imperialism; (2) to spare no pains or means to assist revolutions in the west; (3) to take all necessary measures to strengthen the national liberation movements in the east; (4) and to strengthen the Red Army.”

Gen. J.F.C. Fuller described the Russian strategic impulse in his Military History of the Western World, Vol. III, [pg. 339] using Soviet Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevski as a representative example. “By instinct he was a romantic barbarian who abhorred western civilization,” wrote Fuller. “He had the soul of Genghis Khan, of Ogdai and of Batu. Autocratic, superstitious, romantic and ruthless, he loved the open plain lands and the thud of a thousand hoofs, and he loathed and feared the unromantic orderliness of civilization. He hated Christianity and Christian culture because they had obliterated paganism and barbarism and had deprived his fellow countrymen the ecstasy of the god of war and the glamour of ‘the carnival of death.’”

A country that produces and exports weapons of mass destruction, and does so to the most violent and reckless dictators, can have no other ulterior motive. The fact that this motive is hidden behind false friendship changes nothing. The main characteristic of a totalitarian regime is that it lies about everything and it lies without blushing. Everyone is astonished at the lies told by the Iraqi information minister on television. “The American troops are not in Baghdad,” he insists. But everyone can see that American forces are moving through Baghdad at will. Totalitarian functionaries tell lies because that is the way they operate, by habit and by principle. “Men are so simple,” wrote Machiavelli in The Prince, “and so much the creatures of circumstance, that the deceiver will always find someone ready to be deceived.”

As the Iraqi regime collapses the Russians will have a great deal of explaining to do. It will be interesting to see what fabrications they will invent to cover themselves with legality as they blast the United States for violating international law. Of the many positive results of this war, one will be a newfound distrust of Russia’s rulers.

Saddam's regime evaporates,

Russia denies rumors <!****************************cut and Paste Headline Above*****************>

Thursday, April 10, 2003

<!********************cut and Paste Article Below********************> The regime of President Saddam Hussein has collapsed and leading aides have fled to Syria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures as he speaks during an awards ceremony at Moscow's Kremlin, March 27, 2003. Putin gave medals to 45 officials, servicemen, scholars, teachers, musicians and artists during the ceremony. REUTERS/Pool Russia denied rumors swirling through Baghdad that Saddam had found refuge in its embassy in the city as its ambassador to Iraq, Vladimir Titorenko, returned unexpectedly to Baghdad after evacuating the compound on Saturday. Titorenko returned to Baghdad after a visit to Moscow by U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

U.S. officials said the last traces of command and control of Iraqi forces have dissipated. They said representatives of the regime have simply disappeared and many of their homes were looted by Iraqi mobs.

"The game is over," said Mohammed Al Douri, Iraqi envoy to the United Nations and the last major figure of the regime who hasn't fled.

There was no sign of the Saddam regime in Baghdad on Wednesday or Thursday.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Sahaf failed to give his daily briefing and employees of his ministry were gone.

Some Arab volunteers continued to comprise pockets of resistance around Baghdad. But others, including Al Qaida insurgents, have been captured. The London-based Iraqi opposition said 70 Al Qaida agents sent by Osama Bin Laden to fight for Saddam have been captured by coalition forces in Al Kut, east of the Iraqi capital.

Russia's media reported that CIA teams have failed to find the archives of the Saddam regime. The Moscow-based Interfax news agency said the archives were believed to have been transfered to the Russian embassy in Baghdad, which was reopened on Wednesday amid widespread looting in the capital.

In several foreign capitals, Iraqi intelligence agents were said to have seized documents to prevent them from falling into coalition hands. Iraqi diplomats in several countries were said to have requested political asylum from host gov Vladimir Putin called the US-led war on Iraq the most serious crisis since the end of the Cold War, and warned that it threatened global stability.(AFP/POOL/Alexander Zemlianichenko) ernments.

Russia also denied rumors that Saddam has found refuge in the Russian embassy in Baghdad.

Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabi Berri said Russia and the United States appear to have reached agreement regarding the future of Saddam. Berri said

"Saddam Hussein could have found refuge in the Russian embassy in Baghdad," Berri said in Beirut without elaborating.

Russian officials quickly denied that their government was sheltering Saddam. "This type of statement is not in any way true," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said. "This is another attempt to place our embassy in Baghdad under threat." Officials said Iraq's military and Saddam's militias continued to resist in Mosul, Tikrit and some parts of Baghdad. But they said the operations by Saddam's forces were completely disorganized and would be terminated within days.

"We certainly are focused on Tikrit to prevent the regime from being able to use it as a place to command and control, to restore command and control, or to hide," Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, deputy operations chief at U.S. Central Command, said. "We anticipate that any fighting that would occur there, if we happen to go to Tikrit, would be similar to what we've seen in other parts of the country."

On Thursday, Saddam loyalists, which includes the Special Republican Guard, waged an intense battle against U.S. marines in northern Baghdad. The marine force, which sustained casualties, was said to have been engaged in a search for Saddam.

Saddam's whereabouts is unclear in wake of the U.S. air bombing of a suspected regime bunker in Baghdad on Monday. Officials said U.S. intelligence has revised its assessment and now believes that Saddam escaped the air bombing of his bunker while his aides have headed for Syria.

"Syria has been cooperative in facilitating the movement of people out of Iraq into Syria, and then in some cases, they stayed there and found safekeeping there," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. "They are moving from Syria to still other places."

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