2006年VOA标准英语-US Calls for Russian Investigation of Inte

By Al Pessin
Pentagon
28 March 2006

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called on Russia to conduct a "serious investigation¹" into an allegation that Russian officials provided intelligence on U.S. military plans to Iraqi leaders in the early weeks of the war in 2003. The charge is contained in captured Iraqi documents that are quoted in a Defense² Department report issued on Friday. But on Tuesday, Russia's defense minister dismissed the charge, and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sought to play it down.

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The Defense Department report quotes two Iraqi documents that claim Russian officials, including its ambassador in Baghdad, passed on information from sources at the forward U.S. military command center in Bahrain. Some of the information was accurate, but some key points were not, leading the report's authors to conclude that it contributed to the "fog" of misconception they say enveloped³ Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi leaders before and during the war. 

 

Sergei Ivanov  
  

In Moscow on Tuesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov called the allegation "complete rubbish." He told a news conference Russia has "never supplied anyone with information."

Still, the Iraqi documents have raised questions about whether Russia actually had sources in the U.S. Central Command, or whether officials there were feeding inaccurate⁴ information to the Russians, and why Russia would have passed on any such information to Iraq, particularly at that time.

 
Condoleezza Rice before a Senate subcommittee, March 28, 2006 
  
On Tuesday, Secretary Rice told a Senate committee she had reviewed the information and phoned her Russian counterpart to call for an investigation.

"I have talked with the Russian Foreign Minister [Sergei Lavrov] and asked them to look into this and to take it very seriously," she said. "We take very seriously any implication that someone might have been passing information that endangered the operation at the outset of the war. And we will look for an answer back from the Russian government once, hopefully, they've had a chance to look into it."

 
Donald Rumsfeld, right, with General Peter Pace at Pentagon news conference, March 28, 2006
  
But at about the same time, at a news conference at the Pentagon, Secretary Rumsfeld indicated he is not sure whether the Iraqi documents are credible⁵ enough to require an investigation on the U.S. side.

"I'd have to go back and read it carefully and see what credence⁶ one ought to give to it, and see what we may have discovered through other channels, and then make a decision," he said.

Secretary Rumsfeld had previously⁷ said he received more than two hours of briefings on the report, including classified information not made public. But on Tuesday he said he did not recall any mention of the alleged⁸ Russian role in those briefings. And he indicated that the report Russia was passing sensitive U.S. information to Iraq at a time of war was among many details in hundreds of reports, and he can not be expected to know them all.

"The idea that we're supposed to know what's going to be in every single document or report that comes out of this department, obviously doesn't quite appreciate the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of reports that are put out," he said.

At the same briefing, the top U.S. military officer, General Peter Pace, cast doubt on the Iraqi documents' reliability⁹, even though it was included in the Defense Department report.

"We still don't know whether or not the translation itself is 100 percent accurate," he said. "We don't know if this is real information or disinformation. There's all kinds of pieces of this that need to be looked into."

The Defense Department report issued on Friday was billed as the most comprehensive look inside an enemy government since World War II. Officials reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents and interviewed dozens of Iraqi officials, many of them in custody¹⁰. The public version of the report, published last Friday, was preceded several months ago by a longer, secret version.

Among the report's findings are that Iraqi leaders made a series of miscalculations about U.S. intentions, that Saddam Hussein and other senior leaders believed they would win the war right up until U.S. forces entered Baghdad, and that many senior Iraqi officials did not know whether their country had weapons of mass destruction - one of the primary motivations for the U.S.-led invasion. The report also indicates U.S. officials were wrong about some of Saddam's intentions, and that the confusion over weapons of mass destruction was part of his plan.

1 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

2 defense   

n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩

参考例句：

• The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
• The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。

3 enveloped   

v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She was enveloped in a huge white towel. 她裹在一条白色大毛巾里。
• Smoke from the burning house enveloped the whole street. 燃烧着的房子冒出的浓烟笼罩了整条街。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 inaccurate   

adj.错误的，不正确的，不准确的

参考例句：

• The book is both inaccurate and exaggerated.这本书不但不准确，而且夸大其词。
• She never knows the right time because her watch is inaccurate.她从来不知道准确的时间因为她的表不准。

5 credible   

adj.可信任的，可靠的

参考例句：

• The news report is hardly credible.这则新闻报道令人难以置信。
• Is there a credible alternative to the nuclear deterrent?是否有可以取代核威慑力量的可靠办法？

6 credence   

n.信用，祭器台，供桌，凭证

参考例句：

• Don't give credence to all the gossip you hear.不要相信你听到的闲话。
• Police attach credence to the report of an unnamed bystander.警方认为一位不知姓名的目击者的报告很有用。

7 previously   

adv.以前，先前（地）

参考例句：

• The bicycle tyre blew out at a previously damaged point.自行车胎在以前损坏过的地方又爆开了。
• Let me digress for a moment and explain what had happened previously.让我岔开一会儿，解释原先发生了什么。

8 alleged   

a.被指控的，嫌疑的

参考例句：

• It was alleged that he had taken bribes while in office. 他被指称在任时收受贿赂。
• alleged irregularities in the election campaign 被指称竞选运动中的不正当行为

9 reliability   

n.可靠性，确实性

参考例句：

• We mustn't presume too much upon the reliability of such sources.我们不应过分指望这类消息来源的可靠性。
• I can assure you of the reliability of the information.我向你保证这消息可靠。

10 custody   

n.监护，照看，羁押，拘留

参考例句：

• He spent a week in custody on remand awaiting sentence.等候判决期间他被还押候审一个星期。
• He was taken into custody immediately after the robbery.抢劫案发生后，他立即被押了起来。