Tuesday, March 28, 2006

More on the Russian Spy Story

This is just a quick follow-up to the on-going story of how the Russians allegedly spied on the US on behalf of the Iraqis and possibly aided them against us at the onset of the war.

As per usual, the Russians are denying they did any such thing. That means nothing as the Russian government has a penchant for lying through its vodka soaked teeth whenever the mood strikes. If you don't believe me, just ask any Russian. Blatant lying is a Russian art form.

From Xinhua:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday rejected the U.S. charge of providing intelligence to Iraq at the start of the 2003 U.S.-led war against Saddam Hussein, and said the Pentagon report was politically motivated.

The release of the Pentagon report suggested that it "has hidden political motives", Lavrov told media.

He said this move might be connected with the situation in Iraq.

Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service had also voiced its disapproval of the Pentagon's charge earlier in the weekend.

The Pentagon report claimed that Russia had delivered military intelligence obtained from sources in Qatar, where the U.S. "Central Command" was situated, to Saddam Hussein.

Just one day before the Russian foreign minister made his comments, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. government would talk with Russian authorities about the report.

"Definitely we will raise it with the Russian government," she said, adding that she hoped they would take it seriously.

According to U.S. State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack, Rice might raise the issue with her Russian counterpart at a meeting of foreign ministers in Berlin on Thursday.


Of course it really doesn't matter what the Russians say as the Pentagon isn't planning on investigating this issue any further, cowards that they are these days.

From Mosnews.com:

The United States has not opened an investigation into Iraqi documents that said Russia passed information to Baghdad on U.S. military movements during the 2003 invasion, a Pentagon spokesman quoted by AFP said today.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would not say whether the documents, one of which indicated that Russia had a spy in the U.S. military command in Qatar, had been previously investigated.

But he cautioned reporters not to “drill down into one particular document and make it more than what it is.”

“At various levels throughout the United States government these documents have been made available for people to examine and to learn lessons from,” he told reporters.

“I’m not aware at this point of any particular review, investigation, whatever you want to call it, at this particular juncture,” he said.

The existence of the captured documents was revealed in a military after-action study of the war that looked at the invasion from the Iraqi perspective.

Russia denied it had passed U.S. military information to the Iraqis, and said the accusation had never been made by U.S. officials before.

No comments: