The Bear Is Back

From IBD:
Posted 3/24/2006

Intelligence: Some revelations in the documents captured after the fall of Saddam Hussein have surprised us. Others have not. Included in the latter category are details about double-dealing by Russia.

As it turns out, Russia enjoys playing a double game, publicly reassuring the West it wants to play a supportive role in world diplomacy, then retreating behind the scenes to — and there's no polite way to say this — sabotage our efforts. Some might even call it back-stabbing.

Take the Pentagon's revelation Friday that Russia gave Saddam Hussein intelligence on the U.S. Nothing surprising here, except it did so in 2003, just as we were poised to go to war with Iraq.

Worse, Russia apparently had sources "inside the U.S. command" who enabled Russia to give Iraq extensive, detailed information on U.S. deployments, troop movements and battlefield strength — essentially our whole battle plan. (If so, these sources are guilty of a capital crime.)

This, most certainly, isn't the action of a friend or ally. It may well have contributed to Saddam's decision to retreat and resort to a home-grown Saddamite insurgency to fight the U.S. — an insurgency that has cost 2,300 American lives.

We wish it had stopped there, but it didn't. As we noted here in late 2004, Russia had forged close ties with Saddam's regime — just as it is forging close ties now with Iran by providing it with nuclear know-how.

Russian Spetsnaz, or special ops, troops roamed Iraq in the weeks leading up to the war, helping Saddam remove all traces of his WMD program. WMD were sent across the border into neighboring Syria and Syria's then-puppet state, Lebanon, according to John A. Shaw, former U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense.

As late as September 2002, documents show, Russia was still training members of Iraq's dreaded spy agency, the Mukhabarat, in Moscow and elsewhere. The Kremlin made up lists of assassins for Iraq to use in the West, and offered to get visas for Iraqi spies.

Many of these activities, by the way, were violations of the U.N. sanctions on Iraq then in place. Not that it matters, but remember this the next time Russia lectures us about adhering to "international law" or speaks of the U.N.'s importance.

Why would Russia do this? Part of it, no doubt, was a desire to restore some respectability and clout to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the biggest reason was simple avarice.

Earlier in 2002, Russia signed a gargantuan $60 billion trade deal with Saddam. It also had billions of follow-on business developing some of Saddam's oil fields. Add to that the $8 billion or so owed by Iraq to Russia from past loans, and Russia had every reason in the world to help Saddam.

Those who assume a "new" democratic Russia has changed its spots to become a boon ally to the U.S. will have to disabuse themselves of such notions. The "new" Russia looks a lot like the old Stalinist one, just a bit better when it comes to PR.

Russia still embraces Syria, invites terrorist Hamas leaders to Moscow, sells advanced weaponry to rogue states like Iran, and undermines democracy movements in East Europe.

All this should be kept in mind as we try to defang Iran's nuclear threat with a plan that depends heavily on Russian goodwill. Frankly, based on the latest revelations, we don't see any.