Rossiiskaya Gazeta
No. 56
March 26, 2003
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
U.S. INTELLIGENCE IS TO BLAME FOR BLITZKRIEG FAILURE
By Sergei PTICHKIN
The Shock and Awe blitzkrieg plan has dropped through. It
is admitted even in Washington, and a scapegoat hunt will
possibly start soon.
Things were screwed up either by the CIA or the military
intelligence service. Bush was told that Saddam was panic-
stricken and was about to flee Iraq, but before leaving Baghdad
he allegedly appointed a farewell meeting. His numerous and
powerful relatives and the country's top leaders were to meet
in a bunker. Its location was allegedly known to the
intelligence service. That offered a unique chance to finish
off Iraq's ruling elite together with hated Saddam with one
blow, and to plunge the enemy into shock and awe.
Therefore the first attack on Baghdad was made by
precision strikes and was not intensive. All bombs and missiles
hit the targets and it was reported to Washington that Saddam
was dead.
Not checking that information, U.S. Commander-in-Chief George
Bush ordered the start of a ground operation.
With its start a few demonstrative mutinies should have
erupted in regions populated by Shiites. Secret service
analysts assured that the Muslims of that branch of Islam hated
Saddam, who is a Sunnite, and only waited for a chance to rise
against him.
The first mutiny was planned to break out in Nasiria. It
had been prepared by CIA agents, and the U.S. Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) guaranteed military support. A group
of U.S.
special-task intelligence servicemen landed in a region of an
expected "national uprising" against tyrant Saddam. But the
green berets were ambushed and nearly all of them were killed.
Ground units of the U.S. expeditionary corps rushed to the aid
of the airborne troops. But, faced with fierce resistance and
having lost their men, they retreated. Some were taken prisoner.
It seems improbable, but the coalition troops, above all
the Americans, are losing the war on the intelligence level.
It is believed that in a period since the time of Laurence
of Arabia, that is, the entire 20st century, the British
intelligence service has monitored not only the Middle East but
also all the politicized branches of Islam. The U.S.
intelligence service came to Muslim countries later, but was
most active there, helping, among other things, to establish
intelligence services in the countries that today are leaders
in oil production. It is an open secret that the CIA and DIA
conducted through their agents a veritable war against the
Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Another open secret is that Osama
bin Laden was nourished by Washington, not Moscow.
The reports sent by U.S. intelligence men operating in the
Middle East were traditionally based on "reliable" information
provided by their colleagues from "friendly" intelligence
services. It may seem at first sight that there was no sense at
all for the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia in spending
money on keeping its own intelligence service and establishing
secret-service networks. It looked like world confrontation was
on the level of the U.S., European states, China, Japan and,
perhaps, also India and Pakistan. These countries had reason to
know in advance about possible moves of their friends and foes. But who
cares about Abu Dhabi or El Riyadh? But still...
There is a tiny insular state of Bahrain. Its policy is
pro-American neutrality, if one may say so, and its economy is
oil and tourism. This minute kingdom, in the opinion of best-
informed experts, spends five billion dollars a year on its own
intelligence service.
The intelligence service of Saudi Arabia is the richest
and most tightly closed in the Islamic world. It is quite
possible that its real budget exceeds that of the U.S. CIA, NSA
and DIA put together. But what does the Saudi intelligence
service spend its money on?
There are no formal grounds to say that the intelligence
services of Islamic states support those whom the U.S. lists as
"international terrorists." More likely they pursue their own
goals, which not necessarily coincide with Washington's
interests and are yet poorly understood by politicians in
patriarchal Europe. But it is not to be denied that these goals
are masterly attained.
Having failed in a strategic assessment of Iraq's
military-political capability and in planning its own tactical
operations, the U.S. intelligence service found nothing better
than to blame the military setbacks of the coalition forces on
an instrument-designing bureau in the Russian city of Tula and
a small Moscow region-based enterprise Aviakonversia. This is
yet another confirmation of the fact that the Pentagon has a
rather distorted picture of the real situation in the zone of
the military conflict it had started.
Serbian News Network - SNN
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