This is proof. The USA media is Bush's propaganda rags. All should take notice. Amazing.
Russians Helped Iraq, Study SaysPapers Show Hussein Was Tipped Off About U.S. Strategy During Invasion
By Ann Scott Tyson and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 25, 2006; A01
Russian officials collected intelligence on U.S. troop movements and attack plans from inside the American military command leading the 2003 invasion of Iraq and passed that information to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, according to a U.S. military study released yesterday.
The intelligence reports, which the study said were provided to Hussein through the Russian ambassador in Baghdad at the height of the U.S. assault, warned accurately that American formations intended to bypass Iraqi cities on their thrust toward Baghdad. The reports provided some specific numbers on U.S. troops, units and locations, according to Iraqi documents dated March and April 2003 and later captured by the United States.
"The information that the Russians have collected from their sources inside the American Central Command in Doha is that the United States is convinced that occupying Iraqi cities are impossible, and that they have changed their tactic," said one captured Iraqi document titled "Letter from Russian Official to Presidential Secretary Concerning American Intentions in Iraq" and dated March 25, 2003.
A Russian official at the United Nations strongly rejected the allegations that Russian officials gave information to Baghdad. "This is absolutely nonsense," said Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian mission to the United Nations. She said the allegations were never presented to the Russian government before being issued to the news media.
Russia was among the nations opposed to the U.S. war with Iraq. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 that an American attack would have grave consequences. He urged Washington to resolve its conflicts with Baghdad peacefully.
The study gives no indication who the alleged sources inside the U.S. Central Command might have been, or whether American officials believe the Kremlin authorized the transfer of information to Hussein's government.
The Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East and is headquartered in Tampa, did not respond to requests for comment. A State Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
The U.S. military and defense officials who released the study said the revelations about Russia in the captured documents came as a surprise. They said they believe the captured Iraqi documents are authentic.
"Certainly, sure, I was surprised," said Army Brig. Gen. Anthony A. Cucolo III, director of the Joint Center for Operational Analysis and Lessons Learned under the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk. He said he thinks the alleged Russian intelligence-sharing was linked to Moscow's commercial interests in Iraq. "Essentially, it's driven by economic interests," he told reporters at the Pentagon. "I don't see it as an aberration. I see it as a follow-on to economic engagement." Retired Lt. Col. Kevin M. Woods, the project director, said he has "no reason to doubt the Iraqi documents."
The 210-page study, called the Iraqi Perspectives Project, draws on declassified information from an internal U.S. military report that was based on the examination of more than half a million files of Iraqi documents and dozens of interviews with former senior Iraqi military and political leaders. Some of that information remains classified.
The study offers little analysis of the consequences for the U.S. military of the alleged Russian-supplied intelligence, which was received by what the study depicts as a hopelessly confused Iraqi chain of command.
One document, for example, was sent to Hussein as rumors swirled in Baghdad that the main American military push would come not from the south -- as it in fact did -- but through Jordan into western Iraq, a misperception that U.S. Special Forces units operating throughout the western desert were seeking to create.
"Significantly, the regime was also receiving intelligence from the Russians that fed suspicions that the attack out of Kuwait was merely a diversion," the study says, citing the March 25 document.
Another captured Iraqi document, dated April 2, 2003, said Russian intelligence had reported to Hussein more detailed and potentially damaging information: The Americans had their heaviest concentration of forces, 12,000 troops and 1,000 vehicles, near the Iraqi city of Karbala and were moving to cut off Baghdad.
In fact, the Army's 3rd Infantry Division and other U.S. forces at the time were making a precarious move through a narrow strip of land known as the Karbala Gap, where they anticipated major resistance from the Iraqi Republican Guard and possible chemical or biological weapons attacks.
One senior Republican Guard commander, Raad Majid Rashid al-Hamdani, issued a warning in line with the Russian intelligence when he told Hussein's son Qusay that the main U.S. attack was coming past Karbala. But Hamdani was largely ignored by Qusay Hussein and other generals, to his dismay, he told the authors of the study while describing the internal debates in an interview. "It was the kind of arguments that I imagine took place in Hitler's bunker in Berlin. Were all these men on drugs?" he said.
Michael E. O'Hanlon, a defense expert at the Brookings Institution, said the passing of information on U.S. troop movements during combat, if true, constituted "a stark betrayal." He added: "I think we should be demanding a fairly clear explanation from Moscow."
But Celeste A. Wallander, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that although Russia probably had intelligence on U.S. war plans, she is skeptical that the Kremlin would have ordered that it be passed to Hussein's government.
It is more likely that a "freelancing" Russian official such as the ambassador in Baghdad personally shuttled the information, she said.
"If it were the case that the Kremlin had approved passing along what the Russian military knew about American war planning, that would be extraordinary," Wallander said.
"If it were ordered, it would be a direct action that would in effect help another country to use more effectively their military forces against U.S. forces."
Staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.
