[url=http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20041027-101153-4822r.htm]The Washington Times [/url]posted an exclusive late today, claiming that the missing explosives from al Qakaa, as well as many of the other arms long sought by the US military were secretly removed by Russian troops in the weeks leading up to the Coalition assault on Saddam’s regime:

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.

Why would the Russian military do this? According to Deputy Shaw, the Russians sold many of the high explosives to Saddam in the first place, probably with money skimmed from the corrupt “Oil For Food” program, where it is now known that Saddam was able to skim $11 billion dollars from for personal and military use.

To make the matter even more interesting, the presence of the RDX and HMX explosives which the I.A.E.A located and identified in 2003 were in clear violation of UN sanctions because of their use in the manufacture of nuclear weapons as well as other military functions prohibited by the UN. Yet the I.A.E.A allowed these weapons to remain in place at the al Qakaa facility!

Here are [url=http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20041027-101153-4822r.htm]a few additional noteworthy details[/url] from the Washington Times article:

1. “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.”

2. 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.
3. 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.”

4. 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.
5. 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.

There are many more details and I encourage everyone to read the full article posted now on the [url=http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20041027-101153-4822r.htm]Washington Times Online[/url].

A few additional thoughts:

1. If this is true, it certainly would explain what has been a mystery to everyone, including the UN, regarding the missing WMDs which we were expecting to find in Iraq.

2. If anyone could pull this off, it would be Russian intelligence. Putin is ex-KGB and next to them, the CIA is an amatuer outfit (no offense to any who work for the CIA).
3. I’d be interested to know what we are doing currently to get the Russians to come clean on all of this. Remember that Putin went public a couple of months ago to say that they had reliable intelligence that Hussein was intending to launch terror attacks in the US? It certainly helps explain HOW they could know such a thing.

Let’s call this a developing story…

David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com