You left wing zealots seem to think that any WMD's should have been sitting on the front steps of a palace with an 8x10' sign saying, "WMD's here," waiting to be found.
What makes you think they weren't carefully stashed or exported, like others around the world have been? Oh, I guess Iraq couldn't have done that, even though the Transdniester Moldovan Republic could, eh, Phillipps?
From TODAY'S Washington Postal front page:
washingtonpost.com
Dirty Bomb Warheads Disappear
Stocks of Soviet-Era Arms For Sale on Black Market
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 7, 2003; Page A01
TIRASPOL, Moldova -- In the ethnic conflicts that surrounded the collapse of the Soviet Union, fighters in several countries seized upon an unlikely new weapon: a small, thin rocket known as the Alazan. Originally built for weather experiments, the Alazan rockets were packed with explosives and lobbed into cities. Military records show that at least 38 Alazan warheads were modified to carry radioactive material, effectively creating the world's first surface-to-surface dirty bomb.
The radioactive warheads are not known to have been used. But now, according to experts and officials, they have disappeared.
The last known repository was here, in a tiny separatist enclave known as Transdniester, which broke away from Moldova 12 years ago. The Transdniester Moldovan Republic is a sliver of land no bigger than Rhode Island located along Moldova's eastern border with Ukraine. Its government is recognized by no other nation. But its weapons stocks -- new, used and modified -- have attracted the attention of black-market arms dealers worldwide. And they're for sale, according to U.S. and Moldovan officials and weapons experts.
When the Soviet army withdrew from this corner of Eastern Europe, the weapons were deposited into an arsenal of stupefying proportions. In fortified bunkers are stored 50,000 tons of aging artillery shells, mines and rockets, enough to fill 2,500 boxcars.
Conventional arms originating in Transdniester have been turning up for years in conflict zones from the Caucasus to Central Africa, evidence of what U.S. officials describe as an invisible pipeline for smuggled goods that runs through Tiraspol to the Black Sea and beyond. Now, governments and terrorism experts fear the same pipeline is carrying nonconventional weapons such as the radioactive Alazan, and that terrorists are starting to tap in.
"For terrorists, this is the best market you could imagine: cheap, efficient and forgotten by the whole world," said Vladimir Orlov, founding director of the Center for Policy Studies in Moscow, a group that studies proliferation issues.
Why the Alazan warheads were made is unknown. The urgent question -- where are they now? -- is a matter of grave concern to terrorism and nonproliferation experts who know the damage such devices could do. A dirty bomb is not a nuclear device but a weapon that uses conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials, which could cause widespread disruption and expose people to dangerous radiation. Unlike other kinds of dirty bombs, this one would come with its own delivery system, and an 8-mile range. A number of terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, have sought to build or buy one.
While it has no nuclear bombs of its own, Transdniester is regarded by experts as a prime shopping ground for outlaw groups looking for weapons of every type. It is the embodiment of the gray zone, where failed states, porous borders and weak law enforcement allow the buying and selling of instruments of terror.
Transdniester possesses many of the trappings of statehood, including an army and border guards who demand visas and special entrance fees from visitors. But according to Western diplomats based in the region, these procedures are window dressing used to mask the activities of a small clique that runs the country by its own rules.
Much of the enclave's trade is controlled by a consortium, Sheriff, controlled by the son of the Transdniester's president, Igor Smirnov. Vladimir Smirnov also heads the Transdniester Customs Service, which oversees a river of goods flowing in and out of the country. The cargoes move through the Tiraspol airport; by truck overland to Ukraine or Moldova; and on a rail-to-ship line that connects the capital to the Black Sea port of Odessa. The Transdniester interior minister, Maj. Gen. Vadim Shevtsov, is a former Soviet KGB agent wanted in connection with a murderous attack on pro-independence Latvians in 1991.
Organized crime figures and reputed terrorists flit in and out of the region, according to law enforcement and government officials in Moldova and U.S. officials. Their cargoes are often disguised. "This is one of the places where the buyers connect with the sellers," said William C. Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies. "It's one-stop shopping for weapons and all kinds of other illicit goods. Very possibly, that includes the materials for weapons of mass destruction."
The enormous Soviet-style banners stretched across intersections in downtown Tiraspol bid visitors welcome to "The People's Pride: The Transdniester Moldovan Republic." The city is locked in a Brezhnev-era time warp. Nearly every corner bears a reminder of the regime's stubborn embrace of old-school Soviet communism: a statue of Lenin, a hammer-and-sickle banner, a street named for Karl Marx.
Father, Son and Sheriff
A large portion of the population is made up Russian-speaking pensioners, many of them Soviet military retirees who served in the area and chose to stay because of the relatively mild climate. Like the elderly elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, the retirees are nostalgic for a simpler, more predictable time when the socialist state took care of all their needs.
North of Tiraspol, an industrial center straddles the main rail line into town. Steam blasts from a complex of gray buildings housing the city's Elektromash works, a leading factory that describes itself officially as a producer of electrical engines. According to Moldovan and Western intelligence officials, the factory's product line includes assault rifles and machine pistols, a centerpiece of Transdniester's most profitable industry: weapons.... |
