Posted on 10/28/2004 8:13:01 AM PDT by tomahawk
Russia Denies Involvement in Iraq Weapons
1 hour, 46 minutes ago
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW - Russia angrily denied allegations Thursday that Russian forces had smuggled a cache of high explosives out of Iraq (news - web sites) prior to the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
Defense Ministry spokesman Vyacheslav Sedov dismissed the allegations as "absurd" and "ridiculous."
"I can state officially that the Russian Defense Ministry and its structures couldn't have been involved in the disappearance of the explosives, because all Russian military experts left Iraq when the international sanctions were introduced during the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites)," he told The Associated Press.
The denial followed a story in The Washington Times on Thursday that quoted a high-ranking U.S. defense official alleging that Russian special forces had "almost certainly" helped spirit out the hundreds of tons of high explosives that went missing from the al-Qaqaa base. The newspaper based its report on an interview with John Shaw, the deputy U.S. undersecretary of defense for international technology security.
Two weeks ago, Iraqi officials told the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency that 377 tons of explosives had vanished as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of security." The compounds, HMX and RDX, are key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in bomb attacks.
Russia' charge d'affaires in Iraq, Ilya Morgunov, also denied the report.
"I didn't hear about any weapons to be taken out," Interfax quoted him as saying. "Moreover, there was nobody to take them out, because we actually evacuated all of our personnel."
He said there had been no Russian special forces in Iraq, only civilian specialists working for foreign firms.
I think this is a story designed to 1. show Bush to be a foreign relations fool and 2. to split Putin's international support from Bush. Remember of the various world leaders there is only a handful that have come out pro Bush. To many on this site are blind with hate or suspicion and fall easily for the MSM traps.
Ivanov is a snake. I do not trust him.
You're right.
Here's an excerpt from a National Review article from April 4, 2003:
According to the Russian website www.gazeta.ru, former Soviet generals have also admitted that, just days before the beginning of the U.S.-led campaign against Iraq, they received state awards from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. These are senior retired Soviet officers, General (three-star) Vladimir Achalov and General (also three-star) Igor Maltsev. Achalov, former Soviet deputy defense minister, participated in the failed putsch against then-Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. He was also the Soviet airborne-troops commander and the last Soviet commander-in-chief of the rapid-reaction forces. Maltsev, who is considered a leading authority in air defense, was the chief of the Main Staff of the Soviet Air Defense. He is also a pardoned 1991 coup plotter.
Russian defense sources in Moscow told NRO that both retired generals had to obtain permission from top-level Russian political and military authorities to perform their advisory roles. Thus Russia's official denials that the Kremlin did not know about the "mission to Baghdad" can only sound hollow.
Here's the source: http://www.nationalreview.com/cohen/cohen040403.asp
RE: This is Russia we're talking about
And also, it is Oil-for-Food as well .... the dirtiness is multiplied accordingly!
Once you hang your hat on "Russian partnership" it is difficult to back out gracefully. Even Rice is faced with this challenge.
Even after not being involved in Aghanistan or Iraq... The Islamist hit a school in Beslan... Just as they planned to hit Spain again AFTER Spanish forces were withdrawn... Just goes to show, you cannot trust the word of the people attacking non-muslim countries..
Russia has lied before until we produced the satellite photos. This time the satellite photos will reveal more than those crude 1960's generation spy satellite photos.
It is time for the reveal folks.
Condi Rice just debunked Russian involvement involving moving the munitions out. She said she has seen no report to indicate that. Tony Snow is interviewing her right now.
lol
The New York Times -- WASHINGTON
A group of Russian engineers secretly aided Saddam Hussein's long-range ballistic missile program, providing technical assistance for prohibited Iraqi weapons projects even in the years just before the war that ousted him from power, American government officials say.
Iraqis who were involved in the missile work told American investigators that the technicians had not been working for the Russian government, but for a private company. But any such work on Iraq's banned missiles would have violated U.N. sanctions, even as the U.N. Security Council sought to enforce them.
Although Iraq ultimately failed to develop and produce long-range ballistic missiles and though even its permitted short-range missile projects were fraught with problems, its missile program is now seen as the main prohibited weapons effort that Iraq continued right up until the war was imminent.
After the first Persian Gulf war in 1991, Iraq was allowed only to keep crude missiles that could travel up to 150 kilometers, or about 90 miles, but the Russian engineers were assisting Baghdad's secret efforts illegally to develop longer-range missiles, according to the American officials.
Since the invasion in March, American investigators have discovered that the Russian engineers had worked on the Iraqi program both in Moscow and in Baghdad, and that some of them were in the Iraqi capital as recently as 2001, according to people familiar with the intelligence on the matter.
Because some of the Russian experts were said to have formerly worked for one of Russia's aerospace design centers, which remains closely associated with the state, their work for Iraq has raised questions in Washington about whether Russian government officials knew of their involvement in forbidden missile programs. "Did the Russians really not know what they were doing?" asked one person familiar with the U.S. intelligence reports.
"The U.S. has not presented any evidence of Russian involvement," said Yevgeny Khorishko, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy.
Russia and the former Soviet Union were among Iraq's main suppliers of arms for decades before Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, leading to the first gulf war.
The Bush administration has previously said it had uncovered evidence that Iraq had unsuccessfully sought help from North Korea for its missile program, but had not disclosed the evidence that Iraq had also received Russian technical support.
CIA and White House officials refused to comment on the matter, and people familiar with the intelligence say they believe that the administration has been reluctant to reveal what it knows about Moscow's involvement in order to avoid harming relations with President Vladimir V. Putin.
"They are hyper-cautious about confronting Putin on this," complained one intelligence source.
In his public testimony last week about the worldwide threats facing the United States, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, restated Washington's longstanding concerns about Russia's controls over its missile and weapons technology, without mentioning the evidence of missile support for the Saddam government.
This story was published on Friday, March 5, 2004.
Volume 124, Number 10
Didn't the Russians have another "October Surprise" for us in 1962? And didn't they deny that they had missle in Cuba?
Bill Gertz's article in the Washington Times:
Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/008341.php
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1260067/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1259901/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1260101/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1259767/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1259858/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1259975/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1259930/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1259917/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1259818/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1259844/posts
Both Russian and Chinese weapons have been found in abundance in Iraq. It cracks me up - many on the Left and even, sadly, a few here, love to point to "Reagan helping Saddam" or "Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam" and blab on, untruthfully, that supposedly "Saddam's WMDs were supplied by the US." To set the record straight, the US supplied some small number of CONVENTIONAL weapons and choppers to Saddam very early in the 80s to counteract radical Iran. That was it. That stuff, if not used in the Iran - Iraq War, long ago passed its shelf life. EVERYTHING supplied to Saddam since the mid 1980s HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY THE USSR, RUSSIA, THE PRC, THE DPRK, SYRIA, FRANCE, GERMANY, UKRAINE, PAKISTAN, SERBIA, BOSNIA AND CUBA. End of discussion.
Russian convoy fired on in Iraq
Sunday, April 6, 2003 Posted: 9:23 PM EDT (0123 GMT)
A journalist traveling in the convoy, however, reported they were caught in crossfire.
Alexander Minakov, who works with Rossiya TV (formerly RTR), said in a telephone report that he was in one of eight cars that set off from Baghdad at 11:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. ET), bound for the Syrian border. The vehicles carried 25 Russian diplomats, including Russia's ambassador to Iraq, and journalists who were trying to flee the country.
The journalists included a three-man crew from Rossiya, a crew from First Channel (ORT), and a crew from TVS.
Oh man, I'm bustin' a gut! Bwaaaaaahaaaahaa! Good one! :=)
Yup, she's all over the radio today saying this. Either she's a loose cannon, or this is the Bush party line.
Might I suggest the following. There are, IMHO, three primary serious currents of anti Westernism at work in the world. 1) Islamism - a mixture of Wahhabi extremism, Iranian extremism and generic anti Israeli / Nazified Ba'athist pan Arabism. 2) A new and virulent, Trans-Eurasian monster based more or less on National Bolshevism. It shape shifts sufficiently to include widely disparate elements such as radical Greens in the West, and the UR party in Russia. 3) Classical Marxist-Lenenist philosophy, still found in the PRC, DPRK, Cuba, etc. Many argue the PRC have dropped it, however I argue that the PRC noted carefully the successes and failures of the USSR, and noted with interest the NEP.
Methinks Condi and Co. are more concerned about negotiations with Russia over Iran and North Korea than pointing the finger at their role in transporting Iraq's WMD's to Syria and Lebanon.
I don't think the Russians are that good to do this under our noses or we are that incompetent to not detect the dozens of heavy trucks moving between sensitive arms dumps and the Syrian border on the eve of the invasion.
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