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Russia Implicated in JFCOM Report
In a report released Friday, The United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) suggests that the Russian government may have passed information about U.S. war plans to Saddam Hussein during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The unclassified version of the Iraqi Perspectives Project is the first publication resulting from a two-year study of the former Iraqi regime and military through analyisis of captured documents, and was intended to add ‘the actual red team’s view’ to historical examination of the war.
The Russian government has denied passing intelligence information to Iraq, calling the accusations ‘baseless,’ and saying that they didn’t ‘consider it necessary to comment on such fabrications.’ Brig. Gen. Cucolo, director of the USJFCOM organization that produced the report, was quick to point out that there was no indication of a Russian spy inside Central Command, and speculated that the information may have been gathered via electronic eavesdropping.
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Who's Side Are They On? by PowerPointSamurai
This does not entirely surprise me. I remember reading the English version of Pravda in very early 2003, just prior to the invasion, and one of the more senior Russian ministers had just returned from Iraq after re-assuring Saddam we wouldn’t mess with them. He also came back proudly announcing to some of the more radical Russians that if we did attack, that Baghdad was defended with a "wall of steel" made by Kalishnikov machine guns, and we would suffer like we did in Mogadishu in 1993. It also alluded to Iraq’s chemical weapons.
Some of you may also recall the $3 billion or so sale from Russia to Iraq in 2002 of "non-military equipment", despite sanctions.
Rewind back to 2000 and 2001 and all those great meetings between Bush and Putin. What is very perplexing also is the whole Chechnya thing. They are facing problems with Islamic fundamentalists and terrorists too. We have a lot of reasons to cooperate and things in common and I was really hoping our relations were finally getting on a good track early in the Bush Presidency. I’ve been speculating for some time that some of the snubs we’ve been getting on some policies, and some of the posturing has been to deflect domestic criticism against Putin in Russia for being a "US puppet/lapdog". I also hoped it was part of doing foreign policy "Good cop/bad cop", like we have historically done in partnership with Canada.
Unfortunately, some of their domestic policy U-turns back toward authoritarianism is eroding my hope that this is the case. Unfortunately, all the oil-revenue wealth gains might be tainting their ability to move toward a real democracy and develop sustainable, socially productive economic sectors (like technology). Quick, easy oil revenue makes it easy for authoritarian governments to thrive and tempts them to do things, like rebuild their old military prowess to assert themselves in a foreign policy agenda. Other economic sectors, like information technology, things that require lots of engineers, scientists and skilled workers tend to promote more equitable, sustainable economies and hence democracy because they need the people.