As much as we try to get along with and work with Russia, it's important to remember that Russia is not our friend in the way Britain, Australia, and Poland are.
Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.What effect will this new revelation have on the election? Who knows... if it gets reported it'll probably be influential.John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.
"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units."
Update:
Russia denies involvement.
Does this fact surprise you, that Russia is 'not our friend?' Putin was an officer in the KGB, the director of the FSB (i.e. the new KGB), and was handed the Presidency of Russia by Yeltsin in return for immunity from prosecution for the crimes of corruption Yeltsin (and his family) committed while in office. Putin was also launched into the Presidency by media mogul billionaire Boris Berezovsky, whose several television news stations executed a media campaign for Putin's election effort unlike any seen in that country, ever (of course, that didn't stop Putin from driving Berezovsky into exile several years later). Since entering office, Putin has consolidated his own personal power at every opportunity, working consistently to overturn by whatever means necessary any checks-and-balances that might operate in the Russian system. And the Russians love him for it.
He'll stab us in the back however many times it takes to get what he wants, and to keep it.
Ah, one more reason to listen to George W Bush. Remember way back he mentioned that there was a 300 year plan to pull Russia back into the fold? Oh the chuckles over that one. In fact it was a recognition that it's a thousand plus year problem and while we've made great strides in the past few years, we're not even close to healing the wounds that lead to crap like this incident happening. When you're at the marriage counselor's be prepared to hear a lot of angry crap and more than a bit of inappropriate behavior. This story above is just a sample of the geopolitical equivalent.
Oh, and the inappropriate stuff goes both ways so let's remember the long-term goal, handing down a better dysfunctional relationship between western christendom and eastern christendom than we inherited from our forefathers and a burning desire of both tribal sides to continue the pattern until the whole thing is fixed.
And when I talk about christianity as tribal, I mean it. There are plenty of atheists and "free thinkers" who are tribal christians. They don't believe but they grant the old shamans a spot by the fire and are pissed off at any shamanistic interlopers though they can't explain why.
That's a funny picture... special-ops commando's standing over paper shredders...
It doesn't bother me so much that Russia is not necessarily our friend. They don't pretend to be. We just finished a multi-decade Cold War with them.
We have neutrality with Russia. They do whatever they think is best for themselves. If that helps or hurts us, they don't particularly care.
It's the same as French foreign policy, except that the Russians are somewhat honest about what they're doing.
I like Russians. I like Russian guns too. They're reliable and fun to shoot. I guess they just didn't want to get caught with their hand in the cookie jar. We all know how hard up for cash the Russians are. They may not be our friends but I still like them infinitely better than the French. At least Putin wants Bush to be reelected. Putin won't be in power for ever so I guess we'll see what becomes of Russia. But if he keeps consolidating power the future of Russia could be pretty bleak.