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| Axis of Evil |
| Syrians ’Smuggling Arms To Baghdad’ |
| 2002-12-16 |
| Syria is secretly helping Saddam Hussein to prepare for a United Stated-led attack by smuggling vital arms supplies to Baghdad. Well, they call it a secret. Western intelligence officials have discovered that at least 52 crates containing new air-defence systems and spare parts have been smuggled into Iraq from Syria since the start of December. The Russian-made equipment, which has been purchased through a Belorussian middleman, was taken into Iraq through al-Walid border crossing earlier this month. Western intelligence has now established that Syria is helping Saddam to smuggle substantial quantities of arms and spare parts through its territory, for which the Syrians receive an estimated 20 per cent commission on the purchase price. Nice commission, shame if you have to loose it. Defence experts believe that the latest Syrian arms shipments will enable the Iraqis to conduct a radical upgrade of air-defence capabilities - in particular, improving the range and effectiveness of Soviet-made SA6 anti-aircraft missiles. In recent weeks, Baghdad has been testing its air-defence systems in the no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq, prompting a number of retaliatory attacks by British and American warplanes. Each time they test a new system, we bomb it so they have to import another system, which they test, etc, etc. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #3 Dubya's making a list and checking it twice. Guess who's on the list labeled "not nice"... |
| Posted by: Ptah 2002-12-17 06:51:35 |
| #2 This begs the question of just how many air defense systems the Belorussians, Ukrainians, etc have to export in the first place. Are they making these (I really doubt that in Belarus, but I suppose the Ukrainians might have some sort of viable defense industry), or are these left-overs from the Soviet days? |
| Posted by: Steve White 2002-12-16 16:21:56 |
| #1 I'm not too sure I'd be hot on the idea of fighting a war with hardware procured through Syria if I was Sammy. Any port in a storm, I guess. |
| Posted by: Fred 2002-12-16 13:51:08 |