A Surprising Source - The Russians!

It is difficult to get accurate and unbiased reporting on the U.S. war against Iraq. Certainly much of what is being reported is inaccurate, at best; downright false, at worst.

But good information can be found -- and sometimes from surprising sources. This website, for example:

http://www.aeronautics.ru/

It features English translations (by someone named "Venik") of the http://iraqwar.ru website. That website is run by an analytical center created recently by a group of journalists and military experts from Russia to, in their words, provide accurate and up-to-date news and analysis of the war against Iraq. The English translations of the iraqwar.ru reports are based on Russian Army Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) information.

At first I was a bit skeptical of some of their reports. But, so far, their track record has been pretty good. For example, on Friday the U.S. media had reported that the Iraqi city of Umm Qasr had been taken without a fight. However, that same day, iraqwar.ru reported that the coalition forces had failed to capture the small border town and were facing stiff resistance from Iraqi forces. This was finally acknowledged in the U.S. media a day later.

Then, on Saturday, the U.S. media, quoting government sources, reported that all 8000 soldiers in Iraq's 51st Mechanized Division had surrendered. The next day these sources changed their story, and said that only the Division's top commanders had given up and their troops had either quit or "melted away." (AP News, 23 March 2003)

However, on Sunday, iraqwar.ru reported:

"So far there was no success in trying to clarify the reports about the capture or surrender of the 51st Infantry Division... Analysis of the video footage of the captured Iraqis, distributed by the coalition press-service, makes it difficult to accept the Iraqi army's 'moral breakdown' story advertised by the Americans. Most of the captives retain their dignity and show no fear or ingratiation characteristic of demoralized enemy. In addition to that, Americans did not come up with a single video recording of destroyed or abandoned combat vehicles or any other equipment, nor did they provide any interviews with the captured Iraqis."

http://www.aeronautics.ru/news/news002/news073.htm

Then, on Monday, the NEW YORK TIMES reported that the soldier who identified himself as the commander of Iraq's 51st Division was, in fact, a junior officer who had lied about his position in hope of getting better treatment (NY TIMES, 24 March 2003, page B-1). The article also reported that the rest of the Division could not be accounted for. But, as iraqwar.ru pointed out in another one of its reports, many of the soldiers from Iraq's 51st Division had shown up to reinforce other Iraqi fighters at Umm Qasr.

It's a sad day indeed when we get better and more accurate information from the Russians than from our own government and mass media.

What has happened, for example, to those thousands of people in southern Iraq who, we were told, would "rise up" against Saddam once the war was under way? What happened to that Iraqi resistance that was supposed to crumble before the might of the U.S. military? What is really happening is that our government won't tell us the truth about what's going on in Iraq and the so-called "liberal" U.S. media is repeating everything they say without question.

What is happening is that WE'RE BEING LIED TO!

-Timmy Ramone

(An audio copy of this article can be found HERE. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and broadcast this commentary, provided it is broadcast/distributed in its entirety and is not edited or altered in any way.)

<- BACK to WNMR