Posted 3/27/2006
Foreign Relations: Does the administration's reluctance to talk about captured Iraqi tapes and documents stem from concerns that they'll embarrass allies whose help we seek in the war on terror and in dealing with Iran?
We've learned a lot from the relatively few tapes and documents captured in Operation Iraqi Freedom that have so far found their way into the public domain.
We know, for example, that Saddam Hussein did in fact have active WMD programs, that he was in league with al-Qaida and that he was deceiving U.N. inspectors. And coupled with information revealed by two of Saddam's top generals, we also know our friends the Russians helped spirit these WMD out of Iraq into Syria.
So it hardly comes as a surprise to us that a Pentagon analysis of captured Iraqi intelligence documents shows a Russian ambassador was passing data on U.S. military plans to Saddam before and during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
These revelations show that the administration was right all along on Iraq. But it hasn't exactly been shouting that from the rooftops. Perhaps the reason is that the unreleased tapes and documents may shed further light on how France, Germany and Russia aided Saddam's tyranny and why Russia in particular has been less than helpful on Iran.
The reluctance of Europe and Russia to sanction Operation Iraqi Freedom was due to the extensive financial and military dealings between them and Saddam Hussein. At the outbreak of hostilities, the French held $4 billion in unpaid Iraqi debts, and the French oil company TotalFinaElf had large contracts to develop Iraqi oil fields.
France, of course, built the Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad that Israel, thankfully, took out in 1981. By 1989 an estimated half of French arms production was going to Iraq. It was an Iraqi French-built Mirage fighter that fired a French-made Exocet missile that hit the USS Stark on May 17, 1987, killing 37 American sailors.
The Germans were busy too. W. Seth Carus, a senior research professor at the National Defense University, noted after Operation Desert Storm: "Everything that showed up in Iraq — chemical, biological, nuclear — had a German element in it."
Saddam's "Supergun," the long-range, nuclear-capable cannon that almost became operational, was produced by firms from seven European countries. And need we revisit the Oil-For-Food bribes of European and Russian officials?
And then there's the Russia of former KGB officer Vladimir Putin, who on March 3 welcomed a high-ranking Hamas delegation to Moscow as Russia was completing a $1.2 billion nuclear reactor at Bushehr in Iran and selling Tehran the equipment to defend its nuclear installations.
Before the liberation of Iraq, Russia held $8 billion in Iraqi debt, largely from arms sales, and the Russian oil giant Lukoil had lucrative oil contracts. According to the Stockholm International Peace Institute, from 1973 to 1990 Russia provided Iraq with the lion's share of its weaponry, followed by France (see chart).
Russia is aggressively courting Hamas and Iran — the two most destabilizing forces in the Middle East after al-Qaida and Hezbollah. As with Iraq, Russia is once again the arsenal of tyranny.
In December 2005, Russia announced it would supply Iran $700 million worth of TOR-M1 (SA-15) short-range surface-to-air missiles and is negotiating a deal for longer-range SA-10s. Coupled with radars and computers, they would form a nationwide air defense system designed to prevent a repeat of Israel's 1981 strike.
As journalist Kenneth Timmerman reports, Russian military intelligence teams regularly travel to Tehran, as they once did to Baghdad, for consultations with Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Iranian sources say they're advising Iran on how to prepare for sanctions.
Efforts at the United Nations to come down hard on Iran have stalled, and the main culprit, as with Iraq, is Russia. It may be time to remember President Bush's maxim: Those who are not with us are against us.
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