Russian Intelligence :)

[DemoCoder]

I have been reading Russian military analysis of the war pretty much on a continual basis. The amazing thing is, by the time they publish their articles, their predictions and analysis are already conradicted.

For example, http://www.aeronautics.ru/news/news002/iraqwar_ru_023.htm

 

[SvP]

What's wrong with it?

 

[DemoCoder]

Despite the exchange of strikes there are no reasons to expect any serious attempts to capture the city in the nearest future. By numerical strength the coalition troops that have reached the city borders do not meet even the minimal requirements for storming and heavy urban fights. Coalition forces by Baghdad number up to 18-20 thousand men and can be enforced with no more than 3-5 thousand men while the minimal force necessary to capture a city like Baghdad equals from 80 to 100 thousand soldiers.

For starters. The report on the airport was completely fallacious. Casauality reports are ludicrous. US owns airport. Counterattack was repulsed. I watched the video on TV of US troops sitting around on the tarmac nonchalantly.


Moreover, the source claims that all of this is gleamed from *INTERCEPTS* of US battlefield communications (e.g. decryptions of encrypted, frequency-hopped communications in real time)

#1 All US battlefield communications practice COMSEC
#2 Modern cryptography, if breakable at all, certainly isn't breakable in just hours
#3 If the Russians did succeed in cracking US codes, do you think they would announce it to the whole world? US and UK kept cracks of German, Russian, and Japanese code secret for decades. By announcing the crack publically, the US fix it ASAP. Code breaking is one of the most guarded secretts of a country, if not the MOST VALUABLE SECRET.

Now, if the CIA website was posting similar analysis on their website, do you think they would mention they have broken Russian battlefield communications?

Puh-lease.

Either these Russian reports are completely fabricated, or Russian intelligence is only a step above the Iraqi Information Minister in its quality.

 

[ZoinKs!]

What's wrong with it?

DemoCoder's quote is a good start, but it get's even more amusing then that.

This morning the coalition troops captured Karbala. According to its citizens most of the Iraqi units that were defendeding the town during the evening-night of April 6th left it and moved north... A captured RG officer said that the order to leave the town was received in the morning of April 6th personally from Saddam Hussein after the general HQ obtained information about the American artillery barrage that resulted in a few shells dropped near one of the main Moslem sacred places, the grave of Hussein ibn-Ali. So as not to insult the Shia population of Karbala by the possible destruction of the sacred place the order to leave the town was issued.

Here they claim that Saddam Hussein Himself, displaying enlightenment far beyond anything which those warmongering barbarians Bush or Blair are capable of, permitted the US to capture Karbala rather than risk damage to a Shia Holy site. This gallant act from the same man who parked missiles, tanks, and aa guns next to every mosque in Iraq.

Apparently, with the live video of cheering crowds in Baghdad, the operators of the Russian site have thrown in the towel. But they've provided some excuses:

April 8, 2003, 1846hrs MSK (GMT +4 DST), Moscow - Events of the last 2 days have made further work of Ramzaj group in its current format impossible.

With the embassy personnel and journalists having left Iraq and most of Iraqi information services evacuated from Baghdad, analysis of the situation in Baghdad and Iraq as a whole becomes ineffective.

The quickly changing course of street fights leaves any informational updates far behind. Direct TV broadcasts are far more evident than any analytics. At the same time, we do not have the right to reveal classified, “top secret†information.

Apart from that, our actions meet increasing opposition from the official quarts and in fact are turning into confrontation the outcome of which is not difficult to forecast.

Therefore we have to discontinue our work and thank everybody for taking part in the project.

In conclusion we would like to say:

All the “updates†came out from a compact group formed a few years ago in the framework of a special service. The group used to work for the government for a long time but all its members have left the service and now act as an independent analytical group that has kept some capabilities. This gives an answer to the most common question – about the sources of our information.

We participated in the ongoing events on a “non-profit†basis and had no object other than to stand the US-British informational blockade of the war in Iraq.

I had to interrupt here: the most open and well covered war in human history, and they felt they needed to break the "informational blockade."

Our updates were not genuine materials from any of Russian or other special services, but rather an “intellectual product†of the group itself, product of its operative, informational and analytical abilities. But compiling the updates we used materials available from our friends from special information structures. The very form “operativnaya informatsiya†never claimed to be “military information updates†but served as additional data for self-dependent analysis.

The main goal of the project was to present intelligible military analytics on the war in Iraq, which is currently missing, to the informational space. We had both success and obvious fails along the way.

We are grateful to the iraqwar.ru and forum.vif2.ru administration that took the risk and burden of working with us and we understand how many problems they have to endure because of that.

With all responsibility we state that no messages, letters, appeals and other materials, apart from the daily “updates†on iraqwar.ru and forum.vif2.ru were made by Ramzaj group and any other statement in our name is nothing but mystification.

The author with the nickname “Kondor†is the only authorized source of information about the group and its “official contact personâ€. In cases of uncertainty or “nickname cloning†authentication is possible using his personal photo that supplements one of images published on iraqwar.ru and comes as its logical continuation.

With unfailing respect to all of you,

Ramzaj

They've implied in some of their updates that they can't reveal the truth due to conspiracies by both the US and Russian governments.

I ran across this site early in the war when some nimrod on these boards was hyping it. It didn't take long to realize that both they and the fellow hyping it were talking out of their arses.

These guys have just as much credibility as Baghdad Bob, maybe less. (After all, the informations minister was speaking with a gun to his head; the news site operators weren't.) They make themselves such an easy target for ridicule, I *almost* feel guilty laughing at them.

 

[Simon F]

#2 Modern cryptography, if breakable at all, certainly isn't breakable in just hours

What? So they aren't using rot13?