-Caveat Lector-
|
The Washington
Times www.washingtontimes.com
By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON
TIMES Published October 28, 2004
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.
Copyright © 2004 News World
Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Return
to the article
|
www.ctrl.org
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
|