President Putin says that Iraq was planning a US attack:
Russian President Vladimir Putin says that after the 9/11 attacks Moscow warned Washington that Saddam Hussein was planning attacks on the US.
He said Russia’s secret service had information on more than one occasion that Iraq was preparing acts of terror in the US and its facilities worldwide.Mr Putin said he had no information the Iraqi ex-leader was behind any attacks.
It came a day after US President George W Bush insisted there had been links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
He disputed the preliminary findings of a US commission investigating the 9/11 attacks on Washington and New York that found no “credible evidence” of a relationship between the two.
Speaking on a visit to Kazakhstan, Mr Putin said Russia had warned the US on several occasions that Iraq was planning “terrorist attacks” on its soil.
“After the events of 11 September 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services several times received such information and passed it on to their American colleagues,” he told reporters.
He said the information received by Russian intelligence suggested Iraq was planning attacks in the United States, “and beyond its borders on American military and civilian targets”.
Hmm. Roger Simon thinks this is all realpolitik – that Putin is helping out Bush as payback for the US administration’s soft-pedalling on the Oil-for-Food and related scandals. Who knows. Does this imply it’s all fiction, or that it’s true, and Putin is just choosing to reveal it now? In which case why did the US Administration not make this known earlier? Because the Russians would simply deny it? So are the Americans now going to confirm that they received these warnings? [Gosh it’s complicated, all this realpolitik.]
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