Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms

[igloo]

Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms

By Bill Gertz

THE 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.

[vicman]

thats how much you can trust the putin govmn't. they support bush, kill terrorists, and are tied to the arms missing in iraq . . . flip-flop, flip-flop

[pattbateman]

russians are shady motherfuckers

[mursa]

thats how much you can trust the putin govmn't. they support bush, kill terrorists, and are tied to the arms missing in iraq . . . flip-flop, flip-flop

You know what this means !........ this president now has to invade Russia for aiding and abeding a terrorist regime .

lets be consistent ! lol

ps...by the way i put this into the same category as the " biological weapons were dumped in the tigris river " ...or in simpler form , Conservative crap .

[obby]

Someone hates Bush bad !!!!!!!!

That's ok because Kerry will be consistent and continue to argue this crap and continue to point the finger at Bush in hope to prove his tactics that "if you repeat a lie long enough.......some will eventually believe it is true." That has been his tactic for a while now and I can only laugh at the ones who fall for it.

[tres-b]

Im not fan of Putin and this further cements my distrust for the Russians. Knowing how dirty the Russians, Germans, and of course our #1 allies the French were when it came to Iraq, does this really surprise anyone.

[igloo]

[quote name=mursa

ps...by the way i put this into the same category as the " biological weapons were dumped in the tigris river " ...or in simpler form , Conservative crap .

p.s....your typical tired, lame comment is automatically put into the "mursa is a moronic imbecile of monumental proportions who has once again displayed his idiosy, lack of intellect, and inability to comprehend anything, post after post, thread after thread", ......or in simpler form, you are a mental midget.

[igloo]

Someone hates Bush bad !!!!!!!!

That's ok because Kerry will be consistent and continue to argue this crap and continue to point the finger at Bush in hope to prove his tactics that "if you repeat a lie long enough.......some will eventually believe it is true." That has been his tactic for a while now and I can only laugh at the ones who fall for it.

Kerry gets away with because the media supports the agenda, and vice versa, and there are plenty of useful idiots like Mursa who go along for the ride.....

If anyone still has their head up their ass (Mursa) about what has happened this week with this story, and how this has been reflective of what has been going on for a long time, I suggest you take a deep breath and question whether you really want to go through life resembling a mental midget like Mursa

[mursa]

Im not fan of Putin and this further cements my distrust for the Russians. Knowing how dirty the Russians, Germans, and of course our #1 allies the French were when it came to Iraq, does this really surprise anyone.

Exactly !...then lets invade russia for directly helping saddam !!!

cmon bush ! , conviction ! lol ..."or your with us or your against us ?! "

[mursa]

Kerry gets away with because the media supports the agenda, and vice versa, and there are plenty of useful idiots like Mursa who go along for the ride.....

If anyone still has their head up their ass (Mursa) about what has happened this week with this story, and how this has been reflective of what has been going on for a long time, I suggest you take a deep breath and question whether you really want to go through life resembling a mental midget like Mursa

Insert Igloo wherever Mursa is written out .

Your the Sheep/American extremist ....once you broaden your horizons then you can be taken seriously ...but until then your nothing but a Sheep , and im sure many who read your crap think the same .

[mursa]

Kerry gets away with because the media supports the agenda, and vice versa, and there are plenty of useful idiots like Mursa who go along for the ride.....

If anyone still has their head up their ass (Mursa) about what has happened this week with this story, and how this has been reflective of what has been going on for a long time, I suggest you take a deep breath and question whether you really want to go through life resembling a mental midget like Mursa

Insert Igloo wherever Mursa is written out .

Your the Sheep/American extremist ....once you broaden your horizons then you can be taken seriously ...but until then your nothing but a Sheep , and im sure many who read your crap think the same .

[mursa]

Kerry gets away with because the media supports the agenda, and vice versa, and there are plenty of useful idiots like Mursa who go along for the ride.....

If anyone still has their head up their ass (Mursa) about what has happened this week with this story, and how this has been reflective of what has been going on for a long time, I suggest you take a deep breath and question whether you really want to go through life resembling a mental midget like Mursa

Insert Igloo wherever Mursa is written out .

Your the Sheep/American extremist ....once you broaden your horizons then you can be taken seriously ...but until then your nothing but a Sheep , and im sure many who read your crap think the same .

[obby]

Kerry gets away with because the media supports the agenda, and vice versa, and there are plenty of useful idiots like Mursa who go along for the ride.....

If anyone still has their head up their ass (Mursa) about what has happened this week with this story, and how this has been reflective of what has been going on for a long time, I suggest you take a deep breath and question whether you really want to go through life resembling a mental midget like Mursa

I agree!!!!

What does one do when one has publicly come out against a military interdiction only to find that it proved necessary after all? Spin it! Draw the focus away from one's own, very public error by suggesting that one's "opponents" have made the error.

Since Clinton studiously avoided confronting terrorism his entire tenure, the American people have had to face it in previously unknown levels of s*****ty. And now, having faced down and eliminated the immediate, foresworn enemies and threats of our values and way of life, does anyone in the media approve? Does any "cutting edge" journalist admit that we could be looking at repeats of 9/11 if we had not acted decisively? No.

All we now hear is:

"Gee whiz, the Afghans and Iraqis still have problems."

"380 tons of ammo missing thanks to the US" (mind you while the 1,000,000 + tons that have been secured by the US go ignored.)

"People are still dieing"

No matter what happens, the greater global media and world population will surely blame the US for doing the right thing, and they'll criticize for not getting the "social benefits" established/distributed fast enough.

And the world thinks Americans are the ones who suffer from instant gratification disease!

[mursa]

No matter what happens, the greater global media and world population will surely blame the US for doing the right thing, and they'll criticize for not getting the "social benefits" established/distributed fast enough.

And the world thinks Americans are the ones who suffer from instant gratification disease!

There you go with the World Conspiracy theory , everyone hates the Us blah blah blah ! lol.....fact is BUSH has ruined the US reputation on a Global level . Say whatever you want ,but in the end your the one fooling yourself .

[kramadas]

There you go with the World Conspiracy theory , everyone hates the Us blah blah blah ! lol.....fact is BUSH has ruined the US reputation on a Global level . Say whatever you want ,but in the end your the one fooling yourself .

I know, right! The republicans are always pointing at the democrats for being conspiracy theorists, but then they turn around and start believing the world is out to "get the US" just because they are "jealous". So, if the whole world is saying one thing, and the US another (rather, the neo-cons) then the world must be wrong while the neo-cons are ALWAYS right!!!

haha

[igloo]

Insert Igloo wherever Mursa is written out .

Your the Sheep/American extremist ....once you broaden your horizons then you can be taken seriously ...but until then your nothing but a Sheep , and im sure many who read your crap think the same .

Son, blow away already....you just make yourself look even worse (if that is even possible)......the board is littered with posts and threads of your idiosy, and the continual ass kickings delivered to your lame, tired shit.....

Blow away mental midget.....you are dumb. Case closed,

[igloo]

I know, right! The republicans are always pointing at the democrats for being conspiracy theorists, but then they turn around and start believing the world is out to "get the US" just because they are "jealous". So, if the whole world is saying one thing, and the US another (rather, the neo-cons) then the world must be wrong while the neo-cons are ALWAYS right!!!

haha

You can't be serious with this statement

[jtk4]

can we step back from the political bullshit for a minute and think of the ramifications of this if it is true. If russia becomes less and less democratic we are going to have anoter cold war on our hands. We need russia to be on our side of the fence.

[mursa]

I know, right! The republicans are always pointing at the democrats for being conspiracy theorists, but then they turn around and start believing the world is out to "get the US" just because they are "jealous". So, if the whole world is saying one thing, and the US another (rather, the neo-cons) then the world must be wrong while the neo-cons are ALWAYS right!!!

haha

We're on the same page ........but i'd like to add American extremist monkey like Igloo to the mix .... total idiots who graze on BS the whole day .

[mursa]

I know, right! The republicans are always pointing at the democrats for being conspiracy theorists, but then they turn around and start believing the world is out to "get the US" just because they are "jealous". So, if the whole world is saying one thing, and the US another (rather, the neo-cons) then the world must be wrong while the neo-cons are ALWAYS right!!!

haha

We're on the same page ........but i'd like to add American extremist monkeys like Igloo to the mix .... total idiots who graze on BS the whole day and then spew it out with such certainty ! . lol

[igloo]

We're on the same page ........but i'd like to add American extremist monkeys like Igloo to the mix .... total idiots who graze on BS the whole day and then spew it out with such certainty ! . lol

Mental midget.........you are the epitome of a douchebag who feeds bullshit into your vagina and shoots it at of your Michael Moore wannabe ass.....look no further than the "missing weapons" bullshit story as one of an endless stream of examples of you being the model useful idiot.

Blow away son. Show some self-respect, recognize your idiosy, and enroll in clown school.

What a bafoon

[jtk4]

you guys can not see the forest through the trees

[mursa]

Mental midget.........you are the epitome of a douchebag who feeds bullshit into your vagina and shoots it at of your Michael Moore wannabe ass.....look no further than the "missing weapons" bullshit story as one of an endless stream of examples of you being the model useful idiot.

Blow away son. Show some self-respect, recognize your idiosy, and enroll in clown school.

What a bafoon

S H E E P . ...one word describes you in a nutshell .

[kramadas]

You can't be serious with this statement

well, not word for word, but there have been times when that sort of mentality has been prevalent (eg, amongst people I know here, etc). I just don't like the "either you're with us or against us" mentality.