Did Russia move Iraq's weapons?

I'm not jumping to any conclusions yet, and we'll have to see how this plays out over the next few days, but this could be the final nail in Kerry's koffin.

GERTZ // THURSDAY // WASH TIMES: Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned. John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, “almost certainly” removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it liberals.

Bill Gertz article in the Washington Times. I'm willing to bet that the Washington Times had this info for a while, and were just waiting for the phony "missing explosives" story to be let out. (I copied this from Drudge as the WT servers are getting hammered right now...)

Did Ion Pacepa beat Gertz to this story?

The MOST important question in my mind at this time (other than "is it true") is why did Russia/Putin do this? My gut instinct is that they knew if we found the weapons, it would be painfully obvious that Russia was arming Saddam for his next offensive strike. Is Putin an anti-Semite who wanted Saddam to go after Israel? Were the weapons that we would have found tied to the oil-for-food scam? Would they have been proof positive that Moscow is both corrupt and an enemy of the United States?

Here is a historical timeline of relations between Russia and Israel.

Robert O. Freedman wrote this on 2 September 2001 for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs about the Russian policy on the middle east under Yeltsin and Putin.

On 10 October 2003, The Russia Journal reported that "Russia and Israel have signed a $1 bln deal to sell PHALCON early airborne warning systems to India, sources in the Indian Defense Ministry said."

On 31 March 2004, the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security reported the following:

• A recent agreement between Russia and Israel will soon allow Russia to supply the Asian markets with crude oil through the Trans-Israel Pipeline (TIPline), a 150-mile pipeline running straight through Israel, thus breaking for the short term the Saudi near-monopoly on oil sales to East Asia, the world's fastest growing energy market.

Also, Andrei Zhuravlyov was murdered west of Moscow earlier this year marking the first time ever that Israel extradicted one of its nationals to another country for criminal prosecution.