[Sabertooth]

A U.S. official who asked not to be named said Washington decided to make its accusations public late last week when it discovered Russian company technicians in Baghdad aiding the Iraqis with the jamming system after the U.S.-led war began.

"They are there in Baghdad ... trying to make the system work, the jamming system," said the U.S. official.

"It was the discovery that there are ... Russian technicians helping to make this GPS jamming work in Baghdad that prompted the internal debate in the U.S. government about what to do and (whether) to go public," the official added.

Russia... "the new France."

[Sabertooth]

((((((growl)))))

[Teetop]

If we find Russians, take them out, summarily shoot them with an AK & dump them in the Tigris river....(just my opinion) Since the Russians say that they aren't there anyways, so who would miss them?

[anniegetyourgun]

Russia, France, Germany, China.....all the same.

[AntiGuv]

I'm shocked!! Shocked, I tell ya!

[saluki_in_ohio]

Russia... "the new France."

Rather, nostalgia for the old Soviet Union, perhaps?

Well Putin, if you want to escalate this incident into another Cold War drama, go right ahead...

[Free ThinkerNY]

KGB Putin is not to be trusted. A leopard does not change his spots.

[DoctorMichael]

Hopefully these clowns will 'buy the farm' when the REAL bombing starts.

[zeus54]

Bright Idea: don't complain about it. Let them succeed in setting it up. Trace the jamming signal and ... reach out and touch whoever and/or whatever is at the source point. Depending on the heft of the touch and the proximity of the technicians, they might really become non-existent.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #1

If this is true, Russia is not even sitting on the fence. She is on the other side. We will see if any Russians will be caught.

Not long ago, Russian oil company was caught talking to Iraqi opposition and kicked out by Saddam. I do not know how much good this technical assistance will do for Russia. Especially if America wins eventually despite their interference.

So what went on the Crawford Ranch between Dubya and Vlad ? Apparently they failed to reach any deal on Iraq, contrary to my expectation.

[Paleo Conservative]

The Polish GROM commandos should round up all Russians in Iraq for questioning. Considering the Russian government denies their presence in Iraq, we could deny having them in custody. We should extract every bit of information we can from them.

[P.O.E.]

Not sure I was ever really buying that Russia was our "pal".

[XEHRpa]

Russia... "the new France."

Man, am I glad we got our daughter adopted and out of Russia last year, not now, with all of this tenseness. But I'll say one thing, the Russians, I noticed in Moscow, seemed to have this unhealthy affinity for all things French. The architecture of "old town" (not the Khruschev high rises) was straight out of Paris. My host family's daughter had married a Frenchman working in Moscow and later emigrated to France. Russian pop music has a very French character to it, etc.

Francophilia seemed to be the rage, so I was saddened but not surprised to see Russia jump on the French UN bandwagon. Other than this unhealthy dependency on things French, I found the Russians to be more American-like in demeanor than other European peoples (except the Brits of course) with infrastructure complexities (vastness of geography, plentiful resources, etc.) much more in common with US problems than Western Europe.

Seems to me we could really be great allies, if they could just jettison the French envy.

[Coyote]

And the plot thickens, as the Axis widens and WWIV slowly grinds on.

The sooner Americans (indeed Europeans as well) get it into their minds we're not fighting for oil, but probably our very lives -- for the life of Western Civilization as we know it -- the sooner we can get on with it.

[struwwelpeter]

Russia's used to this sort of thing. When in lived in Omsk, West Siberia, across the street (Ulitsa Vatutina) from my apartment was a park alongside the Palace of Youth (Dvorets Molodezhi). The small park had a monument, facing the street, with a low wall enscribed in gold "Here are the remains of an unidentified soldier, together with the soil from his grave in Afghanistan."

Behind unknown soldier's monument was a raised platform and a set of columns in a circle, open at the top with numerous plaques. There was no explanation, just plaques bearing these dates and places:

Algiers, 1962-1964
Egypt, 1962-3, 1967-75
Syria, 1967-70, 1972-73
Yemen, 1962-63, 1967-1969
Syria/Lebanon, 1982

Laos, 1960-3, 1964-68, 1969-70
Vietnam, 1961-1974
Cambodia, 1970

China, 1924-27, 1937-44, 1945, 1946-1949, 1950
Ozero Khasan, 1938
Khalan Gol, 1939
Japan, 1945
North Korea, 1950-53
Ozero Damanskiy and Ozero Zhalansh Kol, 1969

Finland, 1939-40
Hungary, 1956
Czechslovakia, 1968
Yugoslavia, 1993-95

Cuba, 1962

Mozambique, 1967-69, 1970-75
Bangladesh, 1972-73
Angola, 1975-1979
Ethiopia, 1977-1979

Afghanistan, 1979-1989

I suppose soon they'll add a plaque reading "Iraq, 2003."

[AdA$tra]

It would be cool if we could "wild weasel" the jamming signals.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

The United States believes Russian private sector technicians...

If this is indeed the case, can they be killed as enemy combatants?

[ApesForEvolution]

BTTT

How are you tooth?