[extropy-chat] IRAQ: Weapons pipeline to Syria
Kevin Freels
cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net
Fri Oct 29 01:01:51 UTC 2004
It is quite evident that people on this list aren't immune to believing for
the sake of belief. Those who son;t like Bush choose to believe that WMDs
were never there. Those who like Bush choose to believe that they were there
and taken out of the country. We may never know if they were there or not.
The fact remains that Saddam ignored 12 UN resolutions and constantly worked
against UN inspectors knowing full well that we wouldn;t put up with it
forever. The invasion of Iraq would have been totally avoided if he would
have simply opened up the the UN as he was requested countless times.
Whether or not the WMDs were there or not is irrelevant. He acted as though
they were.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Lorrey" <mlorrey at yahoo.com>
To: <extropy-chat at extropy.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 5:00 PM
Subject: [extropy-chat] IRAQ: Weapons pipeline to Syria
> As I've steadily maintained since last year, it is now becoming evident
> that Iraq received significant aid from Russia in its weapons programs,
> and especially in its program to extract its most useful weapons to be
> safeguarded by Saddam's Baathist bretheren in Syria (note I posted a
> story of how France and Germany negotiated an EU treaty with Syria
> which will allow it to keep any WMD in its territory, i.e. the WMD are
> there, being swept under the rug by the international left).
>
> http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20041028-122637-6257r.htm
>
> 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.
>
> =====
> Mike Lorrey
> Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
> "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
> It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
> -William Pitt (1759-1806)
> Blog: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Sadomikeyism
>
>
>
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