Iraq's WMDs: The Russian connection
By Rod D. Martin
web posted July 3, 2006
"Every senior member of a Western, European, or Asian intelligence service whom I have ever met all agree that the Russians moved the last of the WMDs out of Iraq in the last few months before the war." -- John Loftus
Senator Rick Santorum's recent announcement of over 500 weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq went largely ignored by the mainstream media.
The National Ground Intelligence Center's newly-declassified report proves conclusively that Saddam Hussein lied -- and George Bush and Bill Clinton told the truth -- about Iraq's WMDs. This doesn't square, of course, with the media's mantra that "Bush lied, kids died", so they gave it short shrift.
 A U.S. soldier holds up a photograph showing recently discovered weapons caches found in Iraq, at a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq on June 29 |
But 500 hidden sarin, nerve and VX weapons is no small thing: it's one of the world's major chemical weapons arsenals. Its presence completely vindicates George Bush and Tony Blair. Though unreported, it's obviously major news.
Yet there's an even bigger story. And you probably haven't heard it either.
Earlier this year, some of America's top counter-terrorism and national security experts gathered for their 2006 Intelligence Summit. There, UN weapons inspector Bill Tierney provided a first-ever translation of captured tapes featuring Saddam Hussein and his lieutenants discussing -- you guessed it -- WMDs.
One tape features Saddam and Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz discussing the ease with which Iraq could conduct -- and arrange for a third party (presumably al Qaeda) to carry out -- a biological weapons attack against America in such a way that "they wouldn't finger us."
Others detail Iraq's success in hiding its rockets and its chemical weapons factories from UN inspectors. Saddam himself makes clear -- as the Duelfer Report later asserted -- that his program, far from dormant, would crank into full gear as soon as sanctions were lifted.
Most important: the tapes conclusively establish that Saddam had no intention of destroying his WMDs after the Gulf War -- just as the NGIC report now proves.
But Saddam clearly had far more than the 500 older WMDs the NGIC found. So where did they go?
John Shaw, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense just before and after Iraq's liberation, answered:
"[T]hey went to Syria and Lebanon."
According to Shaw, the WMDs "were moved by Russian Spetsnaz [special forces] out of uniform, that were specifically sent to Iraq to move the weaponry and eradicate any evidence of its existence."
Shaw was one of the first to learn of the countless (universally confirmed) Iraqi truck convoys crossing the Syrian border (and returning empty) in the run-up to the war. At the summit, he detailed how former Russian intelligence head and KGB general Yevgeni Primakov came to Iraq in December 2002 -- the same month Israel's Mossad first detected the operation -- to supervise the WMDs' removal. Primakov's orders were "to erase all trace" of Russia's extensive, long-term involvement in Saddam's WMD programs.
This revelation confirms what National Geospatial Intelligence Agency head Lt. General James Clapper, WMD inspector David Kay, former Justice Department official John Loftus, top Israeli General Moshe Yaalon, this author, and a host of other experts have insisted for more than three years.
Two former Iraqi generals corroborate Shaw's account as well. General Georges Sada, author of Saddam's Secrets and former second-in-command of the Iraqi air force, and General Ali Ibrahim Al-Tikriti, the notorious "Butcher of Basra", have separately confirmed that Iraq possessed significant chemical and biological weapons stockpiles, transported them across the Syrian border by truck and plane beginning in late 2002, and did so with Russian assistance.
Indeed, as John Loftus put it, "Every senior member of a Western, European, or Asian intelligence service whom I have ever met all agree that the Russians moved the last of the WMDs out of Iraq in the last few months before the war."
What was their motive? Saddam's Iraq was Russia's foremost Middle Eastern client state. Vladimir Putin could not afford to have the extent of Russia's dealings with Saddam -- arming, training, Oil-For-Food payoffs, etc. -- to be made public. He wanted to secure as many of Saddam's WMDs as possible. He also wanted to give America a black eye.
The Bush Administration was in no position to complain. Thinking it could race to Baghdad before the transfer was complete, it found itself holding the bag. Announcing the removal of WMDs to Syria would have required another invasion; outing the Russians could have started a new Cold War.
So the President kept his peace.
But this much remains: Syria, the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism, cannot possibly be trusted with these weapons (indeed, the Palestinians claimed last week to possess a new chemical weapons capability, supposedly created ex nihilo). Meanwhile, our media would rather push its domestic political agenda than report this very dangerous truth. And as with the New York Times' treasonous outing of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program last week, the price to be paid in American lives and extinguished liberty is yet uncounted.
We have a problem in this country. It's a good thing we have a "new media". Because the old one is fitting your daughter for her burqa. 
Rod D. Martin is Founder and Chairman of TheVanguard.Org, America's premier conservative movement online. A noted author and speaker, former policy director to Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Special Counsel to PayPal.com Founder Peter Thiel, he is a member of the Arlington Group, the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, and the Council for National Policy's Board of Governors. He also serves as Executive Vice President of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA), "the Republican Wing of the Republican Party". Copyright: Rod D. Martin