Russia: Ally or Enemy?

I just thought I would do some digging into some older stories, and point out that Russia is not exactly our greatest ally, or at least hasn't been.

Here:
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Russia

The highest-ranking Communist bloc defector, Ion Mihai Pacepa (defected from Romania when it was still Communist) has warned that Russia has an interest in having Iraq’s WMDs disappear. He explains that Russia had a key role in Saddam receiving the weapons initially, and had a secret operational plan to make them “disappear” should it become necessary. The plan was called “Sarindar”, or, “Emergency Exit”. Pacepa played a key role in Operation Emergency Exit in Libya. The goal of the plan? To remove all WMDs from any third world ally that was being invaded by the West. The plan, he writes, originally developed for Libya (and to hide Russia’s complicity in the activity) was quickly expanded to other allies of Russia including Iraq. As a bonus, the operation “would frustrate the West by not giving them anything they could make propaganda with.”

WMDs would be burned or buried deep at sea (in Libya’s case, most likely underground for Iraq), but technical documents would be preserved in small water-proof containers for future use. All the plants for WMDs would have a civilian cover, so the West could not prove they were WMD sites. The plan involved an intense propaganda campaign, in which the politicians making the accusations towards the Soviet/Russian ally would be mocked. Among the propaganda activity would be anti-Western demonstrations and protests. Pacepa says he knows first-hand that the Operation Emergency Exit was applied to Iraq, because Ceausescu, Brezhnev, Andropov and Primakov all informed him about it. It is interesting that Primakov also is known to be close to Saddam Hussein and to regularly consult with him (and was in Baghdad from December 2002 up until when the war began). Pacepa concludes Russia advised Iraq on how to implement its old Emergency Exit plan.[72]

Pacepa’s theory makes plenty sense. As stated above, a senior bodyguard for the Iraqi inner circle has said Russian technicians were present at a major WMD site. Former head of Biopreparat, Ken Alibek has said that it is likely that Soviet biological weapons were sent to Iraq, and that Russia assisted Saddam Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons programs even after the Soviet Union fell.

The Wall Street Journal’s Robert Goldberg has cited a bioterrorism expert explaining that Russia was Iraq’s main supplier of materials and technical know-how to make anthrax, smallpox and botulism. Former UN inspector Richard Spertzel reports that Russia gave Iraq some fermentation equipment to produce biological weapons, and that Russians on his UN inspection team were “paranoid” about his efforts to uncover Iraq’s smallpox production. Goldberg explained that no nation has helped Iraq rebuild WMDs more than Russia.[73]

It is also well-known that retired Russian generals have gone to Iraq to help guide Saddam Hussein on defending the country from invasion. They were there right up to the days before war. A Russian diplomat in New York in early April 2003 confirmed that several Russian military advisors were in Iraq, and that Putin knew about it. The Russian advisors were teaching the Iraqis how to fight urban warfare, and not to engage on open fields.[74]

Captured files also show that Russian agents informed Iraqi intelligence on the status of US war preparations, and gave them a heads-up that the war would begin in mid-March.[75] On March 26th, US troops south of Baghdad claimed to have found Russian chemical warheads with a launcher and a chemical weapons specialist. A reporter with the Third Infantry Division confirmed the incident.[76] We heard nothing about it afterwards. It is highly possible, in my opinion, that the US covered the story up, because it would upset our “ally”, Russia. If going public with such a claim would hurt the chances of Russia helping get international forces in Iraq or to help with Iran, then that would explain why such a cover-up occurred. Of course, that is assuming the story is true.

The conclusion of the report is that there is no conclusion. Will the United States take action against Syria? Did Russia have a role in the disappearance of the WMD? All that is left is questions unanswered. But one thing is for sure, there is a geopolitical game being played with the US, and the WMDs are just a tool in that game. Thus, all these questions can be summed up in one question: Does the United States care enough about the game to just accept its war against Iraq, and to proceed with winning the game?
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Now, for all of you brain-washed by the media, I thought I bring up this incredible article again, so that you can see just how the media operates in this country, burying what it does not like.

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Ignoring Putin's revelation
Published June 23, 2004
At a press conference on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered an extraordinary statement that might explain why President Bush felt such a great sense of urgency about driving Saddam Hussein from power. Mr. Putin said that Iraq was planning some kind of attack against the United States. Unfortunately, the same major media that have erroneously suggested that the September 11 commission's report debunks any linkage between al Qaeda and Iraq have shown little interest in Mr. Putin's revelation.

According to Mr. Putin, sometime between the September 11 attacks and the start of the Iraq war, Russia's intelligence service "received information that officials from Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States and outside it against the U.S. military and other interests." The Russians passed this information on to the United States, and Mr. Bush personally thanked a Russian intelligence official for the information.

This story is a potential blockbuster for manifold reasons -- not least of which is the fact that Moscow had long been one of Saddam's closest allies and Mr. Putin was staunchly opposed to the war. Given Saddam's history of supporting terrorism -- and his attempt in 1993 to assassinate the first President Bush -- one would think that the American media would take this story seriously, and be deluging American and Russian officials with questions about the specifics of the Iraqi plot.

But the reaction has been subdued. While ABC's "World News Tonight" covered the story on Friday, other networks felt that they had more important things to talk about than a possible attack on America by Saddam . According to the Media Research Center, Friday's CBS "Evening News" didn't mention Mr. Putin's revelation, even though it spent more than two minutes on the debate over ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. (Dan Rather thought that a more important story was Bill Clinton's statement, in his new book, that he warned President-elect Bush about Osama bin Laden, but Mr. Bush didn't care.)

NBC "Nightly News" skipped the Putin story and focused on something else: a story undermining the Bush administration's contention that arch-terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- given refuge by Saddam -- is linked to al Qaeda. On "Today" the next morning, NBC buried the Putin story behind excerpts of Mr. Clinton reading a passage from his book about how Martin Luther King Jr. had inspired him. On Saturday, The Washington Post relegated the story to Page A11.

The public is poorly served by such coverage. The fact that the president of Russia effectively is taking Mr. Bush's side on the question of whether Saddam posed a threat to this country is a major news story and should be treated as such. That it is not getting this kind of coverage suggests that many journalists do not have their priorities straight.
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