Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: RedTop on October 28, 2004, 05:59:31 PM
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http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041028-122637-6257r.htm
Kind of interesting.
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.
Hmmm.....be sweet if this was true.
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I hate to break it to you, but "welcome to this morning" ;)
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Originally posted by Ripsnort
I hate to break it to you, but "welcome to this morning" ;)
HEY...I was playing Golf. I voted...and was just hearing about this. Im at work. Im eating...and generally just GOOFIN RIP.
:lol
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Putin wants Bush for pres
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See.... I told you it was true.....:D
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Originally posted by Ripsnort
I hate to break it to you, but "welcome to this morning" ;)
welcome to this evening. (http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=206847)
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Originally posted by GScholz
Really, Russia actively working against you would be sweet? I bet Russia opposing you in war would be squealing great then.
The neo-cons must be pretty desperate.
"The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. "
"How fortunate for leaders that men do not think."
- Adolf Hitler
Scholz......Im not biting. You assume to know what I meant , Which you didn't and I'm not explaining. :)
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Originally posted by Nash
welcome to this evening. (http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=206847)
That'd be interesting if they actually posted the video.
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Originally posted by GScholz
"The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. "
"How fortunate for leaders that men do not think."
- Adolf Hitler
scholz thinks john heinz-kerry is hitler?
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Originally posted by Nash
welcome to this evening. (http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=206847)
Umm if I read the article right all they video'd was a bunch of bits of UN tape over some doors?
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It's done like dinner Vulcan. It was there when they were there. Fat lady hath sung et al.
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saddam::curses, the UN flunkies have placed seals on all the weapons bunkers, how can we move the weapons?
saddam lacky:: do not fear oh great one , light of allah, i have paid the UN much "oil for food" money for new seals, we can move everything to Syria and reseal the bunkers, the stupid american cowboys will not know.
saddam:: you are a good and loyal lacky, for this i will stop torturing your family and i may even release them from prison.
saddam lacky:: oh thank you great one, praise be to allah,death to american cowboys.
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john9001 goes from "don't you guys get tired of being wrong all the time" to "I blame oil for food."
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no nash , i blame the nevel chamberlands who think the bad people are good and the good people are bad.
" i hold in my hand a piece of paper signed by mr. hitler guaranteeing peace in our time."
when you meet a bear in the woods, if you just talk nice to it , it may not eat you...... yeah ,ok. :rolleyes:
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It didn't pan out for you this time around. Not the end of the world.
But are you referencing some old Reagan ad? And uh, Neville Chamberlain?
Would it be disengenous to sum up your post as "stop, drop and roll?"
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sorry nash , i don't understand what your saying , but then , i don't speak french.
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That's okay. We're both at a loss.
I don't speak your variety of English.
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I really dont understand the reference to Neville Chamberlain. But certainly Tony Blair is the greatest British Statesmen since Neville Chamberlain.
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I'd like to see that video as well, might answer alot of questions.
Vulcan here's another link, the exact amount of explosives missing is now being called into question.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=204304
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"It's outrageous to claim that explosives were snatched on our watch!"
er...
"They might not haven taken that much!"
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Originally posted by Vulcan
Umm if I read the article right all they video'd was a bunch of bits of UN tape over some doors?
I just read it again, I am not sure what they videotaped and what they photographed. If they only have photographs of the explosives, no telling where those came from. (CBS's recent fiasco with forged documents comes to mind.)
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Originally posted by Nash
"It's outrageous to claim that explosives were snatched on our watch!"
er...
"They might not haven taken that much!"
Now, don't be hasty.....I look at that as just raising more questions about what really happened.
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Yer not just raising more questions.
Yer ignoring evidence that contradicts your position, and raising other questions.
And when those questions get answered, you ignore that, and raise yet other questions.
It's done afaic.
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Originally posted by Nash
It didn't pan out for you this time around. Not the end of the world.
But are you referencing some old Reagan ad? And uh, Neville Chamberlain?
Would it be disengenous to sum up your post as "stop, drop and roll?"
Nicely done. :D
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Originally posted by john9001
when you meet a bear in the woods, if you just talk nice to it , it may not eat you...... yeah ,ok. :rolleyes:
Why would you make analogy where Sadam is the big tough ol' bear and Bush is the girly-man PETA member?
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Originally posted by GScholz
Really, Russia actively working against you would be sweet? I bet Russia opposing you in war would be squealing great then.
The neo-cons must be pretty desperate.
"The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. "
"How fortunate for leaders that men do not think."
- Adolf Hitler
Boy, Hitler hit the nail right on the head.
I somethimes wonder if the insurgency in Iraq is really being directed by some flea bitten terrorist. Paybacks are a *****.
I guess it really doesnt matter as long the oil flows and the Carlyle group rakes in the cash from the sale of military equipment and body bags.
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Originally posted by john9001
sorry nash , i don't understand what your saying , but then , i don't speak french.
You don't speak English either.
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Originally posted by Gunslinger
That'd be interesting if they actually posted the video.
It was broadcast in April of last year...visit the KTSP website....
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Now this is a really good sparring match.
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Originally posted by Nash
Yer not just raising more questions.
Yer ignoring evidence that contradicts your position, and raising other questions.
And when those questions get answered, you ignore that, and raise yet other questions.
It's done afaic.
I'm not ignoring anything Nash, you are assuming. I'm looking for answers, the link you posted proves nothing. The link I posted raises more questions about what really happened.
The first reports about the news crew embeded with the 101st said that the news crew didnt see any explosives. Now ABC says they have a video. So which is it? Did they or did they not see explosives at Al Qaqaa?
Still to much conflicting information.
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I found this about Mr. Shaw.
"Mr. The Honorable John A. Shaw was appointed as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for International Technology Security on October 15, 2001."
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"Prior to his appointment by Secretary Rumsfeld, Mr. Shaw was President and CEO of the American Overseas Clinics Corporation. He has served in a variety of senior positions in the government for over 30 years, including the White House staffs of Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. He served as White House Liaison to the Defense Department under President Ford and to the State Department under President Reagan."
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"From 1978-80, Mr. Shaw returned to the private sector as a Vice President of Booz-Allen and Hamilton International, overseeing the development, organization and management of two new industrial cities, Jubail and Yanbu, in Saudi Arabia."
http://www.telecombriefings.com/bio/bio_john.shaw.html
I sense Rovalicous spin.
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the news crew saw the explosives before they did not see the explosives, BTW the 3rdID was at the dump before the 101st
"rush to judgement", now where did i hear that before?