'We didn't fly to Baghdad to drink coffee' (Former Russian Generals help Iraq prepare for war)

Gazeta.Ru has obtained sensational evidence proving the involvement of a group of former Soviet generals in preparing the Iraqi army for war against the United States. The generals in question refused to discuss their degree of involvement, but admitted that just before the beginning of the US-led campaign against Iraq they received state awards from the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Photos, which Gazeta.Ru has acquired, show an awards ceremony (namely awards, our sources emphasized, and not gifts), involving two very prominent Russian generals.

They are retired Soviet officers, Col.-Gen. Vladimir Achalov and Col.-Gen. Igor Maltsev. The former completed his military career as the Soviet deputy defence minister, after being the Air-Borne Troops commander and the first and last Soviet commander-in-chief of the rapid-reaction forces. The latter resigned from the post of the chief of the Main Staff of the Soviet Air Defence. In 1991 both generals backed the GKChP, (the State Committee for the State of Emergency, set up by a group of Gorbachev opponents with the goal of supplanting him and preventing the disintegration of the USSR) and were consequently dismissed from military service.

The photos show Achalov and Maltsev receiving awards from Iraqi Defence Minister Sultan Hashim Akhmed. Another photo commemorating the event features the Russian generals in the company of the head of the General Staff of the Iraqi Army Izzat Ibragim and his deputies. On the photo published above the Iraqi official is standing between Achalov and Maltsev.

According to our source who provided the photos, the ceremony was held ''less than 10 days before the beginning of the war'' in a building that was destroyed by US cruise missiles in the first few hours of air raids on Baghdad.

Stavka2 writes:

Yes and the proof is where? Thought so...speculation and ineuendo...show me the beef.

Source: Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2003

COMMENTARY

The Russian Strain

By ROBERT GOLDBERG

Russia's foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, was decidely testy yesterday, saying that his country's firms have not violated sanctions on Iraq. "There is no evidence confirming violations by Russian firms of existing sanctions," he stated, before aiming sharp words at the U.S. He has reason to be so defensive. Russia's involvement in the arming of Iraq goes beyond supplying radar-jamming systems and the personnel to maintain them. Moscow has supported Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction and connived with Baghdad in hiding its role as a main supplier of the materials and know-how to weaponize anthrax , botulism and smallpox.

* * *

Russian support for Iraq is not new. Gary Milhollin and Kelly Motz's July 2001 article in Commentary notes that inspectors found a 300-page file detailing a 1995 deal for Russian aircraft. The agreement not only included military craft that the embargo banned, but engines and guidance systems for remote-controlled drones, which could deliver gas or germ-warfare agents.

In 1999 Russia agreed to sell Saddam Hussein $100 million worth of military hardware. The deal involved Ahmed Murtada Ahmed Khalil, the transport and communications minister, who ran the biological weapons program at the Salman Pak facility outside Baghdad, and who knew exactly what Iraq would need in order to rebuild its WMD program after the Gulf War. Under his tenure, Russian involvement in the development of Iraq's WMD program has increased. Iraq's Scud-C or al-Hussein missiles were acquired from high-level military officials and Russian arms dealers. The al-Hussein was retrofitted to deliver chemical and biological weapons with Russian technology. In 1998, the U.N. Special Commission was prevented from verifying Iraqi claims that it had destroyed the al-Hussein warheads. At that time, Russia joined with France and Germany in taking up Iraq's campaign to weaken the inspection authority and opposed the Clinton administration's decision to bomb Iraq back into compliance. To this day, inspectors believe that Iraq retains a stock of chemical munitions, including chemical/biological al-Hussein ballistic missile warheads, 2,000 aerial bombs, 15,000-25,000 rockets, and 15,000 artillery shells. Iraq may also retain bio-weapon sprayers for its Mirage F-1s.

Russia appears to be helping Iraq build a better biological and chemical weapons program. Richard Spertzel, the former head of Unscom's biological weapons inspectors, points to negotiations in 1995 between Russia and Iraq for the supply of fermentation equipment, including a 5,000-liter fermentation vessel. He notes that the vessel that Moscow agreed to sell Iraq for use in making single-cell animal protein was 10 times larger than the largest vessel Iraq has admitted using to brew germs. Documents he uncovered call for an agreement between leaders of Iraq's weapons programs and Russian experts for the "design, construction and operation of the plant." The agreement -- which Russia maintains was for the purchase of equipment to manufacture animal feed -- includes the names of the director of Iraq's botulinum toxin program, the chief engineer for the Al Hakam chemical weapons plant, and prominent members of Iraq's military industrial commission. Iraq publicly admitted producing anthrax and botulinum toxin at Al Hakam. Though Russia flatly denied involvement, it refused to allow Mr. Spertzel to interview Russians to determine whether the equipment was actually delivered. Though inspectors decommissioned Al Hakam in 1996, Mr. Spertzel believes that the Russian equipment was delivered and stored elsewhere.

Key Unscom scientists were Russians who had been deeply involved in the Soviet bioweapons program. Tariq Aziz worked with Premier Yevgeny Primakov to pack inspection teams with Russians picked by Moscow. The manipulation paid off. Mr. Spertzel recalls the Russians were "constantly giving the Iraqis the benefit of doubt. They said, 'no way could Al Hakam be a dual-use facility.'" Yet Mr. Spertzel is "100% convinced that Iraq has weaponized smallpox," and that the Russians on the inspection team were "paranoid" about his efforts to uncover smallpox production. They had reason to be, since it is likely that Russia supplied the original virus. The CIA determined that in the 1990s, a Russian scientist, Nelja N. Maltseva, had brought the strain -- named the Aralsk strain after a 1971 smallpox outbreak in the town of Aralsk, at the northern end of the Aral Sea -- to Iraq. The Soviets hushed up the 1971 outbreak; and their successors in Moscow now deny that Maltseva handed any virus over to the Iraqis.

In 2002, Alan Zelicofff, an adviser to inspection teams and a senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories who has run a hepatitis C monitoring program with Russian epidemiology units, uncovered a Soviet-era secret report about the Aralsk outbreak. When forced to admit its occurrence, Dr. Zelicoff's Russian counterparts claimed it was a natural outbreak triggered by the "garden variety" smallpox virus. But after interviews with victims and an analysis of the outbreak's timing and trajectory, Dr. Zelicoff determined that it was caused by "a new and lethal strain of smallpox that traveled at least 20 miles from a secret biological weapons testing site on an island in the Aral Sea to infect people downwind on a ship." Of the six adults who were exposed to the strain, five contracted smallpox despite being immunized. Dr. Zelicoff and others believe that the strain is more communicable, and might be vaccine-resistant. He asked colleagues in Russia to help him locate the strain last summer and to determine if the current smallpox vaccine can protect people from infection. They replied curtly that no such strain existed, a stance they maintain to this day.

Other countries have -- through carelessness or complicity -- provided Iraq with the materials and equipment needed to build up its biological and chemical weapons program. But none have done more to rebuild Saddam's arsenal, and none have been more aggressive in helping hide the truth, than Russia. If these weapons are deployed against our troops, or wind up in terrorist hands, Vladimir Putin might find that he never gets asked to the Bush ranch again.

Mr. Goldberg is a writer specializing in bioterrorism and medical innovation.

Stavka2

Absolutely correct. I agree completely that so much is not known--and such is the fog of war.

I would like very much to believe what our President Bush has said, that he has looked in Vladimir Putin's eyes and seen his soul.

Surely they have made an agreement to reduce nuclear arsenals dramatically based on personal trust.

You are right to create the distinction between Vladimir Putin and Boris Yeltsin--and you know what a dramatic difference there is between William Jefferson Clinton and George Walker Bush.

I listened to the 32-minute address of Clinton at the 1994 Commencement of the U.S. Naval Academy in the Marine Stadium with the epic battles on its walls.

Clinton lied: first that he would not put our people in Bosnia--which he did for a year, then another eighteen months, then indefinitely--when it was a matter in the very backyard of Europe which they lacked the will to address.

Second--that he would not unilaterally arm the Bosnians. This he was at that very moment allowing the Iranis to do.

Clinton allowed his major donors Loral (Bernard L. Schwartz) and Hughes (C. Michael Armstrong) to fax the Chinese 200 pages in 1995 which gave the PLA 100% missile reliability.

Then Clinton allowed Wen Ho Lee to be protected (Code Name Kindred Spirit by Notra Trulock, FReeper ntrulock) as well as giving the PLA all manner of guided tours through U.S. military installations and platforms.

Saddam Hussein has had freedom from inspections since 1998.

As for avoiding satellite reconnaissance, I have read that the road-mobile SS-25s are moved to avoid this annoying problem.

Iraq has/had mobile bioweapons labs and these can be easily moved.

You taunt, "Is US intelligence so poor"?

Are you aware of the great work of such U.S. heroes as former Senator Robert Torricelli who hamstrung CIA's recruitment?

This during the Clinton deconstruction of US intelligence which included the replacement of James Woolsey with John Deutch.

As well as the replacement of William Sessions with Louis Freeh.

At any rate, we shall see what we shall see.

Ken Alibek became convinced the US bioweapons program was dismantled and left his post as head of Biopreparat in 1992.

He says it retains at least four sealed sites capable of manufacturing tons of anthrax, and that Russia hosted Iraqis and Iranis in its bioweapons-related educational programs.

We have thus far found a facility in the north wherein terrorists were making such weapons as ricin, and I've never doubted Saddam Hussein was aiding terrorists--

He's always rewarding Hamas, Hezbollah, al Aksa bombers' families, and there is the Salman Pak airliner fuselage for hijacker training.

And the link of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed with his alleged nephew Ramzi Yousef--two Pakistani Baluchs with stolen Kuwait passports implicating Iraqi intel.

I don't insist upon an official Russian program to aid Saddam Hussein--only that there is a thriving traffic out of Russia in arms of all types.

It is even reported that nuclear sites are so insecure that materials flow freely from them.

The bunkers and tunnels of Iraq will be yielding up surprises for years to come.

But now they will be less lethal surprises.

As for the even-handed application of anti-terror standards (KLA, Chechnya, etc.), it seems an obvious necessity to me--for example, I cannot condone this government's insistence on discussion of a Palestinian state when they continue to train their children to wear bomb belts.

I haven't heard any buzz that Saddam was moving items into Syria, but recently it's suggested Syria is/was moving Kornets, etc. into Iraq.

Nothing seems as fungible as the "alliance" of terrorists with regimes. Case in point the two Pakistan Baluchs Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (mastermind of 9/11) and his "nephew" Ramzi Yousef (mastermind of WTC I 93).

Atta met with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani in Prague April 2001. Al-Ani was second secretary of the Iraqi consulate in Prague and was working undercover as an officer in the Iraqi foreign intelligence service, the Mukhabarat. The meeting was monitored by the Czech counterintelligence service, the BIS.

Clinton's mark on the CIA is shown in its denial this meeting occurred--it was Clinton who refused Osama bin Laden when Sudan offered him.

I am not surprised to hear that Clinton lied again by arming the Bosnians rather than simply act in the open.

UN operations are always flawed by unrealistic ROEs. Clinton's UNization of Somalia by removing our Marines and ambassador and putting our Rangers under UN command without armor and air cover is a good example.

I see that October 22, 2000, George W. Bush was quoted by NYT/Reuters saying he would shift the Bosnia operation to Europe by removing U.S. forces, at that time 11,400.

He announced to Congress this January:

The U.S. force contribution to SFOR in Bosnia and Herzegovina is approximately 3,100 personnel. United States personnel comprise just under 18 percent of the total SFOR force of approximately 17,500 personnel. During the last half of 2001, 19 NATO nations and 17 others, including Russia, provided military personnel or other support to SFOR. Most U.S. forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina are assigned to Multinational Division, North, centered in the city of Tuzla. Other U.S. military personnel are deployed to other countries in the region in support of SFOR. These deployments include approximately 50 U.S. military personnel presently deployed to Hungary and Croatia in order to provide logistical and other support. The U.S. forces continue to support SFOR efforts to apprehend persons indicted for war crimes. In the last 6 months, U.S. forces have not sustained any combat-related fatalities.

So apparently he's cut the U.S. force there to about one fourth of what it was when he took office.

It's a move in the right direction, the direction he said he'd move. It's slow and incomplete, but it was Ike who said as soon as he found out he couldn't kill his congressional opponents he went to the golf course and left the details to Richard Nixon.

The above troop-strength statement (3,100) was made in January of 2002.

The most recent statement shows U.S. forces are now 58% of that figure, or 16% (1/6) of the U.S. force when George W. Bush took office.

The U.S. force contribution to SFOR in Bosnia and Herzegovina is approximately 1,800 personnel. United States personnel comprise approximately 15 percent of the total SFOR force of approximately 12,000 personnel. During the second half of 2002, 18 NATO nations and 17 others, including Russia, provided military personnel or other support to SFOR. Most U.S. forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina are assigned to Multinational Brigade, North, headquartered in the city of Tuzla. Additionally, U.S. military personnel are deployed to other countries in the region in support of SFOR. These deployments include approximately 80 U.S. military personnel deployed to Hungary and Croatia to provide logistical and other support. The U.S. forces continue to support SFOR efforts to apprehend persons indicted for war crimes and to conduct counter-terrorism operations. In the last 6 months, U.S. forces have not sustained any combat-related fatalities.

I see the direction Bush is moving and it is consistent with his campaign promise to remove the U.S. forces in Bosnia.

During that campaign Gore responded with the sounds of a cow giving birth, with apologies to the cow.

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