Stiff Right Jab: Looking the Other Way?
Steve Montgomery & Steve Farrell
Friday, Oct. 09, 2001
This is Part 6 in our series on the terrorist threat out of Russia - our strange ally.
"Are US leaders really so stupid that they never learn from chronic Russian lies and misbehavior? Or is there an alternate agenda to allow Russia to build a coalition that will eventually attack the US?" So asks intelligence expert Joel Skousen in his World Affairs Brief, last week.
The question is a disturbing one, which few analysts have the gumption to ask - but the question must be asked. It is this question and questions like it we continue to pose in regard to America's strange alliance with "ex-communist," "ex-terrorist" sponsor Russia - an alliance we are told is an absolute necessity in times like these.
But is it really? Consider this revelation broken on Friday, Oct. 5, by NewsMax's John L. Perry:
"American taxpayers will likely be the ones picking up the tab for nearly $50 million of arms shipped by Russia to anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan." (1) "Russia has made it clear it is not in the business of giving away arms, which constitute one of its few really lucrative cash exports." (2)
The likely method of payment? The United States will pay the Northern Alliance, which will in turn pay Russia. On Sunday, the United States pledged such aid. Russian aid, therefore, is in truth American aid.
Thus, we ask again, how is it that we need the aid of Russia? Or, more to the point, where is the integrity and what is the underlying agenda of a Bush administration that pretends that Russia has come to our rescue? Russia has not come to our rescue. It has come to the trough to further its cause.
Observe how this works. What is being sold? Mr. Perry answers: "left-over Soviet materiel, no longer in production and now being broken out of storage." From tanks to rifles to replacement parts. Thus Russia, a supposedly bankrupt nation, a nation which can't - or won't - feed its own, manages to have a military almost without equal in the world, a military we are told by experts is superior to the United States in a few critical areas.
Call it Russia's military modernization plan. Sell or "give away" junk as a sign of cooperation and change. Get rewarded by the U.S. with more aid, more disarmament treaties, more access to U.S. security secrets (as "partners"), a better international image, and then sit back and laugh at the foolish Bush administration which, like its predecessors, turns a blind eye to the Russian ambitions.
This was already the policy, prior to September 11.
Skousen observes:
"Despite years of evidence pointing to the waste of money spent under the guise of "dismantling Soviet weapons" (Nunn-Lugar authorization by Congress), the Bush administration has awarded contracts to five Globalist-connected American firms to continue the ‘dismantlement and storage of nuclear weapons and hazardous materials from the arsenal of the former Soviet Union,' according to the BBC. Every one of these corporations (Halliburton International, Raytheon, Bechtel, Parsons Delaware and Washington Group International) has agreed to keep all dealings secret from the American public - and for good reason.
"The administration does not want us to know that not only are all the nuclear weapons outdated, but they are NOT being destroyed. Instead, these companies are returning all usable parts and warheads to Russia for storage in a huge US-built facility that US inspectors are not allowed to enter. Thus US arms controllers have no idea how many of the dismantled warheads are still in storage and how many have been reinstalled on other more modern equipment. ..."
Prior to this Bush fiasco, during the Clinton years, we heard about Russians losing suitcase nukes. Again the Russians manipulate that one to their advantage: "Russia got a cool billion to ‘safeguard the Russian nuclear stockpile."
Skousen sneers:
"I don t believe for a minute that Russia was so lax as to let these weapons slip away. Suitcase nukes are highly complex instruments and require regular maintenance. They would be unreliable by now anyway unless Russia "allowed" their disappearance (plausible deniability) and is still maintaining them on behalf of the terrorist groups who were allowed to receive them."
Ditto, regarding the Vozrozhdeniye Island "unprotected" stockpile of anthrax. It's all part of a Russian chess game for more American aid, says Skousen.
He concludes:
"They make billions in yearly arms sales to the most dangerous nations on the planet and yet claim they don't have enough money to do basic environmental cleanups other responsible nations do. All of this continues to bolster evidence that Russia is channeling all available funds into its secret war machine, and letting the West pick up the tab for everything else." (3)
New Russia, Old Soviet Pattern
This decade-old pattern of the "new" Russia is really just a continuation of the artifice of the old Soviet Union.
Writing in April of 1988, James J. Drummey unveiled the nothing-but-froth "trust but verify" program the Soviets got away with during the Reagan administration.
"On December 8, 1987, President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev placed their signatures on the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. As this agreement was being signed amidst a rush of pomp and ceremony, it was also being broken by the USSR. Mr. Reagan's cooperation in a monstrous fraud was not only un-wise; it was dangerously un-American."
Verify What?
"To begin with, the treaty calls for the dismantling of delivery systems, not nuclear weapons that can be removed, stored and remounted on other missiles. Under its provisions, the United States is to do away with Pershing and Cruise missiles based in Europe, and the Soviets are to discard their SS-20 missiles.
"President Reagan made much of the verification procedures in this treaty. There would be no Soviet cheating this time, the American people were assured. But much of the ability to verify that SS-20s have been dismantled is based on the treaty's requirement that "photographs" of missile launchers, support structures and support equipment be included as part of the document. These photographs were never produced by the USSR. Instead, the Soviets supplied indistinct photocopies of what U.S. inspectors are supposed to verify has been destroyed.
"No American has ever seen the SS-20 missile, and none has ever taken a photograph of one. Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), a strong opponent of the treaty, has pointed out that 'we don't really know what it is that we are trying to verify.'
"And there's more. The Soviet SS-25 missile is not included in the INF treaty. Only ten feet larger than the SS-20, it can readily accept the nuclear warheads taken from the SS-20, and is itself an intermediate-range weapon. In addition, the SS-20 can be placed inside the SS-25 canister, or SS-20s and SS-25s can be lined up on the same site - all labeled SS-25s that may not be inspected by American inspection teams.
"The INF treaty is a trap. But so is any treaty with a Communist, as history repeatedly demonstrates. The President should never have signed it, and no Senator should ever ratify it. Yet, the hoopla continues." (4)
Yes, the hoopla continued then, and it continues now. That's our point. Business is as usual with Russia. Every Russian "favor" is a cloaked Russian advance. How soon, then, till behind the cloak comes the dagger?
Contact Steve & Steve at StiffRightJab@aol.com.
If you haven't already, read Part 6 of Steve Farrell's Democrats in Drag and Part 9 of Missing the Mark With Religion. Missed a Stiff Right Jab? Visit our NewsMax archives
Footnotes
1. U.S. to Pay for Russian Arms? John L. Perry, NewsMax.com, Oct. 5, 2001. Return
2. Ibid. Return
3. Visit www.joelskousen.com. Return
4. Un-American Treaty, James J. Drummey, The New American, April 11, 1988. Return