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Russia - Masque Of The Red Death Vladimir Putin has been hailed perhaps as the pivotal post cold war Russian leader. He has executed a skillful dog and pony show, convincing both the Bush and Blair administrations that the former Soviet Union was not only no longer a military threat to the West but was indeed now becoming a close ally. Obviously Russia's cooperation with the French and German UN delegation's intransigence in dealing with Iraq has done much to throw cold water on this heretofore-budding union. It's important to note that such a relationship offered hope, though ultimately unfounded,...

President Obama on Thursday nominated a former CIA officer and longtime lawyer who examined missteps in U.S. intelligence to be the spy agency’s next inspector general, hoping to fill a position at the watchdog office that’s been vacant for more than a year. If confirmed by the Senate, Shirley Woodward would fill the role left empty since David Buckley stepped down from in January 2015, on the heels of a landmark determination that CIA officials had gained unauthorized access to Senate computer files. Lawmakers called the episode a potential violation of constitutional separation of powers, and the spat led to...

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The big question at this hour: Is the U.S. planning to invade Iraq sometime next year? While White House officials are downplaying a "New York Times" report that says the U.S. is considering a major air and ground assault for next year that could include as many as 250,000 American troops. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein celebrated his 65th birthday over the weekend with the usual well-choreographed tributes from the Iraqi people. And, in Baghdad, tens of thousands of people marched as a show of support and defiance in the face of U.S. determination to topple Hussein. Ambassador...

The Today show's "Where in the World is Matt Lauer?" sweeps month ratings gimmick brought Lauer to Moscow's Red Square on Thursday where he repeatedly pressed Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov to trash the Bush administration's foreign policy. Lauer asked: "Was Russia right and were the Americans wrong?" on WMD in Iraq and, "Do you think the credibility of the United States and this particular administration has been damaged internationally in this last year?" Not all have succeeded in Russia's semi-free enterprise economy, but virtually all have more personal, political and religious freedom, yet Lauer suggested many were better off...

THE kumbaya crowd which pressed for East Timor's independence must shoulder much of the blame for the failure of its dysfunctional Government. But while the collective of liberation theologists and civil rights lawyers cheered Fretilin's Portugese-educated Marxist guerrilla leaders, the same candle-wavers protested against the toppling of the mass murdering Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. Yet East Timor, with a population estimated at about one million, whose independence was internationally recognised on May 20, 2002, is now arguably in proportionately worse shape than Iraq, population 26 million, where the first election under its new constitution took place just last December. The...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran, which the United States accuses of secretly pursuing nuclear weapons, has a stake in the world's biggest open-pit uranium mine in the African state of Namibia, the mine's owner told Reuters. Rossing Uranium Limited, which is majority owned by Anglo-Australian firm Rio Tinto, sells its uranium to nuclear power plants in the United States, Japan, South Korea and Sweden. Graham Davidson, the general manager for operations at Rossing, said in a letter to Reuters that the company's board of directors only permits the sale of uranium for use in generating electricity. "The government of Iran has...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The chief executive and a managing partner of the collapsed Dubai private equity firm Abraaj Capital Ltd were arrested on U.S. charges that they defrauded their investors, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a federal prosecutor said on Thursday. Abraaj founder and Chief Executive Arif Naqvi was arrested in the United Kingdom last Friday, while managing partner Mustafa Abdel-Wadood was arrested at a New York hotel on Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Griswold said at a hearing in Manhattan federal court. Abdel-Wadood appeared at the hearing and pleaded not guilty to securities fraud, wire fraud...

The relations between Russia and the Shiite's religious leadership in Lebanon started to develop in the beginning of the seventies. The spiritual leader of the Lebanese Shia community, Imam Moussa Al-Sadr, visited Moscow in 1972 and asked Soviet authorities to issue humanitarian aid to his people. At the same time cooperation between the Marxist factions of the PLO that were active in Lebanon and Soviet military intelligence – GRU, intensified greatly. Several soviet officers (speaking fluent Arabic) even visited Palestinian terrorist training camps in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon between 1972-1975. Using their connections in PLO they managed to establish...

BY JAMES TARANTO Friday, April 30, 2004 4:11 p.m. EDT Joe Says It Was So Remember Joe Wilson, the loudmouthed former ambassador who stirred up a kerfuffle last year by claiming that BUSH LIED!!!! when he purportedly said Saddam Hussein's Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger? Now Wilson has a book out, and it seems he's changing his story. The Washington Post reports: It was Saddam Hussein's information minister, Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, often referred to in the Western press as "Baghdad Bob," who approached an official of the African nation of Niger in 1999 to discuss trade--an overture...

Syrian military positions in the province of Hama and Aleppo were targeted Sunday by a series of strikes that caused an explosion reportedly strong enough to trigger an earthquake observed by neighboring countries. Citing an unnamed military source, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported that military positions in villages of Hama and Aleppo were hit by a still unidentified rocket attack at around 10:30 p.m. local time ...

Israeli jets have reportedly targeted a suspected chemical weapons factory in western Syria. The Syrian National Army said four IAF warplanes hit a military site in Hama province, near Masyaf, in the early hours of Thursday morning, killing two soldiers and causing massive damage. It is believed the site was linked to the sarin gas attack in April, which UN investigators said was the work of the Syrian government. The UN confirmed the chemical attacks in Khan Sheikhoun, which resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians and prompted a US missile attack, were perpetrated by Assad regime forces. Israel...

The Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, assassinated a top Syrian rocket scientist on Saturday using a car bomb, the New York Times first reported Tuesday. The scientist, Aziz Asbar, led a confidential unit known as “Sector 4” at the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center developing cutting edge missile technology designed to further Syria’s efforts to initiate the long range bombing of Israeli cities. Asbar was killed along with his driver near the research center, which lies in the town of Masyaf and has long been believed to host chemical weapons development. The center has twice been the target of Israeli...

Footage of Masyaf shows missile shaped items; IAEA urges Syria to let inspectors visit reactor that IAF destroyed in 2007. A compound in western Syria with buildings and hundreds of missile-shaped items has been identified as functionally related to a nuclear reactor Israel destroyed northeast of Damascus in 2007. Satellite footage of the site in Masyaf was obtained by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security and shows a compound built in a ravine and surrounded by what appears to be a line of trenches. While there are no security measures visible in the commercial satellite imagery, ISIS said...

A senior Syrian journalist reports Iraq WMD located in three Syrian sites 06 January, 2004 AFP Nizar Nayuf (Nayyouf-Nayyuf), a Syrian journalist who recently defected from Syria to Western Europe and is known for bravely challenging the Syrian regime, said in a letter Monday, January 5, to Dutch newspaper “De Telegraaf,” that he knows the three sites where Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are kept. The storage places are: click for images of Iraq's WMD location in Syria -1- Tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria. These tunnels are an integral...

LONDON – An Iraqi man whose testimony the United States used as a key evidence to build a case for war in Iraq says he is proud that he lied about his country developing mobile biological warfare labs. The Guardian newspaper published an interview Wednesday with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, who has been identified as the informer called "Curveball," whose claims about weapon labs formed part of then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the U.N. Security Council in 2003, shortly before the war began. The Guardian quoted al-Janabi as saying: "I had the chance to fabricate something to...

The left is worried about Trump’s conflict of interests. Maybe they should worry about Barack Hussein Obama’s conflicts of interest. Lease Given to Our Enemies The family of Iraqi nuclear physicist Dr. Jafar Dhia Jafar, “the father of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program,” has been awarded a 35-year lease for cargo container operations at Port Canaveral, Florida. The Center for Security Policy reports that two intrepid researchers produced a paper titled, Secret Deal Allows Company Tied to Saddam’s Nuclear Bombmaker, Iran and U.A.E. to Manage Key Florida Port Facilities. The paper notes that Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew unilaterally approved...

After the release of the Iraq Survey Group's Duelfer report, the headlines blazed "No WMD Found." ...This reflects the notion that Iraq was only a threat if it had military munitions filled with WMD. The claim "Iraq was not an imminent threat" was also expounded by pundits that seemingly crawled out of the woodwork as well as those opposed to President Bush. But have these individuals read carefully the report...? While no facilities were found producing chemical or biological agents on a large scale, many clandestine laboratories operating under the Iraqi Intelligence Services were found to be engaged in small-scale...

Saddam Hussein moved his chemical weapons to Syria six weeks before the war started, Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom says. The assertion comes as President Bush said yesterday that much of the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was incorrect. The Israeli officer, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, asserted that Saddam spirited his chemical weapons out of the country on the eve of the war. "He transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria," General Yaalon told The New York Sun over dinner in New York on Tuesday night. "No one went to Syria to find it."

It has been confirmed across the board that 18-wheelers were seen going into Syria before the war, crossing the border soon after Iraqi intelligence replaced the border guards and cleared nearby areas for their passage. There are also eyewitness reports of the trucks going into Syria, and eyewitness reports of their burial in Lebanon. The trucks with the weapons were tracked to three locations in Syria and Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, currently controlled by the Syrians, Iranians, and Hezbollah. Sources I've spoken with that have seen satellite photos of the movements confirm that the WMD in Syria are at military bases,...

Al-Afari And Away: Ignoring the Saddam-ISIS link by Daniel Clark During two Republican primary debates, presidential frontrunner Donald Trump claimed that Saddam Hussein had been an enemy of Islamic terrorism, and argued that he should have been left in power to kill terrorists, so that our soldiers didn't have to. Considering that, one might think a reminder of Saddam's moustache-deep involvement in terrorism, along with the fact that he'd retained an active chemical weapons program between wars, would be a major news story. One might even expect that a story about a former member of Saddam’s regime helping ISIS to...