Russia provides Saddam with U.S. military strength at start of Iraq War

For the second day in a row, as we were "going to press" ABC News  put a gist of a newly released Iraq Regime document on their website. But again Sammi provides a full translation of the document CMPC-2003-001950. Parenthesis are the translators: (PDF) CMPC-2003-001950

                                                Office of the Presidency
                                                Mr. Secretary (of the President)

Subject: Meeting with the Russian Ambassador

Best of our salutes,

We would like to inform you that the Russian ambassador met this evening with the general director of Foreign Economic Relations and the General Director of the Grains Trade and told us the following:

1-    Provide the necessary facilitations for the travel of the Russian experts working in the projects of our ministry (probably grains or trade experts) without any delay for the period of time between the 5th and 8th of March. The last plane will take off on the 9th of March. He mentioned (the ambassador) that the request of evacuating the Russian citizens follows an order from the Russian president.

2-    He said that Russia, France and Germany and both Syria and China were expected to join the three of them, have prepared a project of resolution opposing the Anglo-American project submitted to the United Nations. Voting on both projects will take place on the 9th of March. He pointed that some countries of the Security Council might refrain from voting, like Pakistan, Chili and Kenya.

3-    During the meeting the ambassador gave us the following information about the US military presence in the Gulf as per the 2nd of March:

Number of troops: 206,500 out of which 98,000 naval forces and 36,500
    infantry.  90% of theses forces are in Kuwait and on the Navy ships.

US troops have reached the island of Bubiyan (Bubiyan is largest Kuwaiti island in the Kuwaiti coastal islands chain)

Number of tanks: 480
Number of armored cars: 1132
Number of artillery: 296
Number of Apache helicopters : 735
Number of fighter planes: 871
Number of Navy ships: 106.  68 in the Gulf and the rest in Oman         (State of Oman), Aden (Yemen), the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.
Number of air carriers: 5. One nuclear powered. Three in the Gulf one in the Mediterranean and one on its way.
Number of Cruise missiles: 583 based on the US Navy and distributed on 22 ships.
Number of Cruise missiles on planes: 64
Number of heavy bombers B-52 H: 10 in the Indian Ocean.
Number of B1-B: 8 present in the US base of Thumarid in Oman.                                                                                                         

4-    The ambassador pointed that what worried us (most probably “us” refers to the Russians) was the increase in the number of planes in Jordan where the number of planes in Al Sallt base was as follows:
24 planes F-16
10 planes Tornado
11 planes Harrier
He also mentioned that there were 10 A-10 tank destroyers in the Jordanian base of King Faysal.

5-    The ambassador also pointed that a certain number of the 82nd Division (82nd Airborne) which was deployed in Afghanistan started coming to Kuwait. The number of troops has reached 750 soldiers.

Translator’s note: The original Iraqi document is made of four pages. The released document shows only three pages. It is not improbable that the fourth page could have been lost or might show up in a different release.

Ray: This one seriously doesn't require any analysis. It speaks volumes about our "friends" the Russians.

All original tranlsations by "Sammi" are copyrighted intellectual property of "Sammi" for purposes of print media publishing. Free use for internet sources.

Comments

[retire05]

I wonder what Putin is saying to the Pres about this? Wanna take a guess? First the OFF scandal, now this?

And this slug comes from a nation that has a permanent vote on the U.N. security counsel? I hope John Bolton takes this document and shoves it right down their throats. He should be standing and demanding that Russia explain why they stabbed another U.N. member in the back.

[jerry]

Have you noticed? The major networks are not making much of these reports. Big surprise I know. I am certain that very soon there will be documents concerning hidden WMD's that will also be downplayed as conjecture.

[Lornkanaga]

Jerry--SecState Rice spoke about it on Fox News this morning.