Anyone who doubts the importance of the Oil-for-Food Scandal should read this article from ABC News – Did Russian Ambassador Give Saddam the U.S. War Plan? Evidently he did and evidently the ambassador (Vladimir Teterenko) was bought and paid for by OFF (Thank you, Kofi). According to the documents upon which this article was based, the Saddamites had foreknowledge of much of what the US was up to, thanks to that collection of old KGB hacks. No surprise, really, and it also should be no surprise that there weren’t a lot of WMDs lying around when our tanks rolled in (although it may yet prove out that there were more than we have been told so far), not to mention a lot of Iraqi troops. They knew to head for the hills…. or berms.
It’s good, by the way, that ABC (despite their risible biases) is jumping to the fore on this whole skanky mess because they are, after all, a major network with tremendous reach. I applaud their journalistic honesty in this area. That king of fuddy-duddies, CBS, appears tohave been completely asleep on the release of the new Saddam materials. Wouldn’t want to disrupt their world view.
UPDATE: Reader Marc Landers emails: There’s another big story in the ABC report.
” The information was obtained by the Russians from “sources at U.S.
Central Command in Doha, Qatar,” according to the document. ”
Sources at Centcom? Are we talking about an American spy or one of the
coalition partners?
More here.
What isn’t clear to me from a quick scan of the article is if the information was classified (some of it seemed to be) and if so, why a Russian had access to it.
Troop deployment would be visible to anyone in the prepositioning areas, but the war plans shouldn’t have been.
Some of this could be info from Russian satellites being given to the Iraqis, no?
Oncde upon a time this kind of thing would have moved that doomsday clock a little closer to midnight.
While some of this information may have been obtained from satellite imagery, I think it is much too detailed to be solely based on this imagery. Would satellites be able to provide such as specific count of cruise missiles on both ships & planes? While perhaps someone with more authority can say for certain, methinks some level of human intelligence was involved. Hopefully, an investigation can find the leak (human or otherwise) and prosecute those responsible.
I probably should’ve mentioned I was basing my opinion off of the numbers over the numbers Roger linked to over at Ray Robison’s site.
Thanks to Ray & Sammi for all their hard work.
What if the information was released deliberately? A case of, “We’ve got snipers here and here, pursuit cars stationed here, here, and here. The assault team is right by your back door ready to go in. And the robot is about ready to pop in a gas grenade through the kitchen window. Why don’t you take a couple of minutes to think about it?”