Those pesky Ruskies

Now I have been saying for years and reporting facts that the Russian mi litary (long before 1992) had been training th Iraqi people in the use of arms and the use of technology so I thought it oh so appropo to post this article in it's entirety.


Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms
By Bill GertzTHE WASHINGTON TIMES


Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad."The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloging the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX, is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said.The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said.Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita could not be reached for comment.The disappearance of the material was reported in a letter Oct. 10 from the Iraqi government to the International Atomic Energy Agency.Disclosure of the missing explosives Monday in a New York Times story was used by the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, who accused the Bush administration of failing to secure the material.Al-Qaqaa, a known Iraqi weapons site, was monitored closely, Mr. Shaw said."That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA.The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6."The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division's arrival at the facility," the statement said.The statement also said that the material may have been removed from the site by Saddam's regime.According to the Pentagon, U.N. arms inspectors sealed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa in January 2003 and revisited the site in March and noted that the seals were not broken.It is not known whether the inspectors saw the explosives in March. The U.N. team left the country before the U.S.-led invasion began March 20, 2003.A second defense official said documents on the Russian support to Iraq reveal that Saddam's government paid the Kremlin for the special forces to provide security for Iraq's Russian arms and to conduct counterintelligence activities designed to prevent U.S. and Western intelligence services from learning about the arms pipeline through Syria.The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not persuade Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said.A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said.However, the most important and useful arms and explosives appear to have been separated and moved out as part of carefully designed program. "The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict," Mr. Shaw said.The Russian forces were tasked with moving special arms out of the country.Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots.The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said.Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a "redoubt" in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq.The Russian units were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria, the second official said.Besides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said."Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border," the defense official said.Documents reviewed by the official included itineraries of military units involved in the truck shipments to Syria. The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said.The director of the Iraqi government front company known as the Al Bashair Trading Co. fled to Syria, where he is in charge of monitoring arms holdings and funding Iraqi insurgent activities, the official said.Also, an Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam's minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003.The Russian "spetsnaz" or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said.Regarding the explosives, the new Iraqi government reported that 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or high-melting-point explosive, and 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or rapid-detonation explosive, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, were missing.The material is used in nuclear weapons and also in making military "plastic" high explosive.Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.

Wow... look at all the good quality people supporting Kerry!

This is a clever little article that I found online. I really enjoy reading about all the communist and socialist nations that adore John Kerry. This is my rebuttal to all the "The World Hates Bush" Liberals. Hey, if Communist nations and major arms suppliers to the former totalitarian Hussein regime are backing Kerry then I say we should be slightly concerned about that and not jumping around saying, "The world loves him!" :)




By Ben JohnsonFrontPageMagazine.com October 22, 2004 “You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.” – Joseph Conrad in the novel Lord Jim.Months after John Kerry boasted of having received secret endorsements from anonymous foreign leaders around the world, many of the gaps have been filled in. The leaders of the world have weighed in on the 2004 presidential election. Let’s run down the list of nations supporting each candidate: John Kerry North Korea: Although north Asia’s gulag archipelago has not formally endorsed a candidate, official Communist organs have shown a pronounced affinity for John Kerry. In March, the Financial Times noted, “John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic candidate, is also getting good play in Pyongyang.” North Korean radio has aired several of Kerry’s anti-Bush speeches, and the Korean Central News Agency has given the Democratic candidate “glowing” coverage. Kerry has publicly called for bilateral discussions with North Korea, such as those conducted by Jimmy Carter on behalf of the Clinton administration in 1994, although analysts agree these would be counterproductive. Iran: A June editorial in the Tehran Times stated, “Kerry is exactly what the U.S. needs right now.” It is undisputed that Kerry has promised to give Iran exactly what it needs right now: nuclear fuel. Kerry pledged to supply Iran with nuclear fuel, just as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton did to North Korea as it revved up its nuclear program during the 1990s. Communist China: The state-controlled People’s Daily “news” website formally endorsed John Kerry in July. An unsigned editorial averred: Comparatively speaking, Kerry is noted for being friendly with China. He was once firmly against linking the most-favored-nation status to China with human rights. From a long-term view, a Democratic administration, which stresses international cooperation, pursues “multilateralism” and stands for a policy of contacts, will be better for both world peace and Sino-U.S. relations. The editorial also noted John Kerry opposes “containment of China.” Palestinian Authority: PA foreign minister Nabil Shaath has said in a Kerry presidency, “it would be likely that several staff members during Clinton's administration would return,” adding, “that would be a good thing.” Kerry has vowed to name Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter as Middle East envoy. The state-controlled Palestine Media Center bashed “Bush's refusal to deal with Arafat.” President Bush has said Yasser Arafat is not a worthy “partner” working for Mideast peace. Conversely, in his 1997 book The New War, John Kerry referred to Yasser Arafat as a “statesman.” Malaysia: In a letter dated last Friday, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad exhorted fellow Muslims to vote for John F. Kerry “in the name of Islam.” Mohamad said his co-religionists “have a duty to ensure that Bush will not be able to determine our fate for four more years…There is an obvious connection between the sufferings of the Muslims and the policies and thinking of Bush.” This is not Mohamad’s first foray into international controversy. As he prepared to step down from his 22-year-long reign as prime minister last year, he famously told the 10th Islamic Summit in Kuala Lumpur, “Jews rule the world by proxy.” (To counteract this, he has instructed Muslims to vote for John Kerry, the only ethnically Jewish candidate in the presidential race.) Socialist Spain: As early as March, Spain’s appeasenik prime minister and Socialist Party member Jose Luis Zapatero said, “I want Kerry to win.” Zapatero told the International Herald Tribune Spain’s Socialists – the party of unilateral surrender elected after the Madrid train bombing on March 11 – were “aligning ourselves with Kerry” to build an “alliance” for “peace, against war. Zapatero, who said he favors “a dialogue between the government of Spain and the new Kerry administration,” vowed the Kerry-Socialist axis would assure there will be “no more deaths for oil.” France: According to all reports, John Kerry is wildly popular in the land of Gaul. A recent Le Monde poll found the Francs backing John Kerry over President Bush by more than three-to-one (72 percent to 19 percent). The Financial Times quotes an unnamed “French government official” pining for the return of the Democrats to Washington and the Ba’athists to Baghdad, saying, “A lot depends on who is in power in both Washington and Baghdad. If there's change in both countries then it's possible we would re-examine our position.” (Emphasis added.) The chairman of Democrats Abroad gave the “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech of the 2004 campaign, gushing Kerry “is the closest thing that you will have to a French politician.” Germany: The Financial Times quotes Gert Weisskirchen, the foreign policy expert for Germany’s ruling Social Democratic Party, as analyzing the presidential race thus:I cannot imagine that there will be any change in our decision not to send troops, whoever becomes president. That said, Mr. Kerry seems genuinely committed to multilateralism and as president he would find it easier than Mr. Bush to secure the German government's backing in other matters. Vietnam: An unnamed “Vietnamese diplomat” told the international press, “I think Vietnam would support Kerry because he has travelled many times to Vietnam and he understands better the situation here than Bush, who is a war-mongering president.” Why not? Kerry has 30 years experience negotiating with Vietnamese Communists and is immortalized in Ho Chi Minh City’s War Remnants Museum. Others: International polls indicate the vast majority of Pakistanis, Jordanians, and Moroccans disapprove of President Bush and may be assumed to support Sen. Kerry by default.

Raises my eyebrows...

I had to post this article - this is some amazing stuff




Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, today reiterated her claim that the AIDS virus was a deliberately created biological agent."Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys (since) time immemorial, others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that."Us black people are dying more than any other people in this planet," Ms Maathai told a press conference in Nairobi a day after winning the prize for her work in human rights and reversing deforestation across Africa."It's true that there are some people who create agents to wipe out other people. If there were no such people, we could have not have invaded Iraq," she said."We invaded Iraq because we believed that Saddam Hussein had made, or was in the process of creating agents of biological warfare," said Ms Maathai."In fact it (the HIV virus) is created by a scientist for biological warfare," she added."Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious," Ms Maathai said.Africa accounts for 25 million out of the estimated 38 million across the world infected with HIV, and the vast majority of infected Africans are women, according to UNAIDS estimates.The United States on Friday congratulated Ms Maathai on winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but tempered its praise over her claims about AIDS."She said (HIV/AIDS) was invented as a bio-weapon in some laboratory in the West," a senior State Department official said."We don't agree with that."The official pointed to a report of those comments published in August in Kenya's daily Standard newspaper, in which Ms Maathai was quoted as saying that HIV/AIDS was created by scientists for the purpose of mass extermination.


Whew. Just let it sink in a little.