Daniel Forbes
The U.S. and British military won't have the Russian secret services to contend with in Iraq anymore, at least not on the Net. Early last week, the Russian military analysis Web site, Iraqwar.ru, discontinued its daily "Russian military intel update."
The three-week-old, daily feature - was it real-world intelligence useful to the Iraqis or merely the product of a fertile imagination? - claimed to be based on leaks from senior Russian intelligence officials.
It offered detailed predictions about coalition troop movements many hours or even days in advance. It also quoted "intercepted" U.S. radio traffic, toted casualties on both sides and - with what perhaps its raison detre, the rest conceivably nothing but necessary ballast - provided strategic advice to the Iraqi military. It was a combustionable mix that was enjoying steadily increasing traffic, applause, and scorn.
In the first two weeks of the war, as stalled coalition generals pondered different routes of attack, and the Iraqi military retained functioning command and control apparatus, a close reading yields some stark go-here, do-this advice.
The three lead items in the April 7 update, the day before the feature was killed, offered particularly unabashed intelligence, including projections about American moves later that day in Baghdad.
Carrying the title: "Aggression against Iraq," the site appeared amidst Russian government hostility to the war and Russian military sympathy for the Iraqis who used some $8 billion worth of Russian arms. Knight Ridder Newspapers military correspondent Joseph L. Galloway mentioned Iraqwar.ru in an article April 3rd that quoted two senior American officials anonymously. The first said Iraqwar.ru featured "genuine Russian intelligence reports, some of them based on intercepts of U.S. communications. . ." And the second "speculated that the Web site might be a clever attempt to pass useful information to the Iraqis by posting it publicly on the Internet."
By phone, Galloway added, "The Russians are always very careful about letting that stuff out unless there is a specific purpose . It was not just to make the U.S. look bad. It was for someone's benefit, and it sure wasn't our's."
[rest at <http://prorev.com/forbesrussia.htm>]