You have commented 375 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
International
Why U.N. can’t handle the job
2003-04-11
Edited for content:
People's Exhibit 1 in the case for limiting U.N. control over the future of Iraq is the "Roland 2," France's best man-portable air defense weapon. Capitol Hill has been told that soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division have found a stack of these weapons at a military depot attached to Baghdad International Airport. Some of them had "2002" manufacturing dates.
How interesting, tell us more.
Germany's Der Stern reports that additional Rolands were found when U.S. and Kurdish forces overran the Ansar Al-Islam terrorist base in northeastern Iraq last week. According to the Pentagon, it was a Roland that destroyed a USAF A-10 aircraft on Tuesday. These weapons pose a significant threat to allied aircraft. It is also interesting, given the debate over whether the Saddam Hussein regime had connections to terrorists, that the Iraqi Army and the Ansar Al-Islam group were armed with the same weapon.
Check the serial numbers and see if they come from the same production run. Bet the French have "lost" the records showing where they went.
Iraq has been under a U.N. Arms Embargo since 1990.
Gee, isn't that about 12 years before these missiles were made?
In addition to the Rolands, allied forces are turning up a number of foreign weapons or other military gear, most of which violate the embargo. This is the flavor of an ever-growing list:
  • Russia: GPS jamming equipment, sea mines, night-vision goggles and the "Kornet" anti-tank missile. Russian arms magazines and marketing brochures brag about the Kornet's "thermobaric warhead". Moscow is a world leader in this technology.
    The "Kornet" is thought to have been the missile used on those destroyed M1A2 tanks.
  • China: Fiber optics for Saddam's command-and-control system and chemicals for his WMD projects.
    Linked his SAM sites, remember all those airstrikes on the fiber nodes before the war?
  • Germany: The Financial Times reports the Drager firm of Lubeck sold gas masks to Saddam's fedayeen terrorists. U.S. Marines found the masks with instructions in Arabic. Drager even has an English-language Web site that describes the firm. When British troops raided Chemical Ali's villa, they found he had left behind his "German gas mask," perhaps a Drager model.
France, Russia, China, and Germany. Now we know why they didn't want the UN to approve that resolution. They knew what we'd find.
Posted by:Steve

#5  comments); ?>werwer
Posted by: Anonymous   2003-04-11 20:26:00  

#4  comments); ?>werwer
Posted by: Scott   2003-04-11 13:54:48  

#3  comments); ?>werwer
Posted by: Yank   2003-04-11 13:03:31  

#2  comments); ?>werwer
Posted by: Anonymous   2003-04-11 12:07:07  

#1  comments); ?>werwer
Posted by: FormerLIberal   2003-04-11 09:51:53  

00:00