This is truly a GREAT photograph by Roger Scruggs taken May 18, 2004 at Lake Washington.

Click Here to view the enlarged photos of the Mig-25 in the sand

The Iraqi jet, an advanced Russian MiG-25 Foxbat, was found buried in
the sand after an informant tipped off U.S. troops.

The MiG was dug out of a massive sand dune near the Al Taqqadum airfield by U.S. Air Force recovery teams. The MiG was reportedly one of over two dozen Iraqi jets buried in the sand, like hidden treasure, waiting to be recovered at a later date.

Contrary to what some in the major media have reported, not all the jets found were from the Gulf War era.

The Russian-made MiG-25 Foxbat being recovered by U.S. Air Force troops in the photos is an advanced reconnaissance version never before seen in the West and is equipped with sophisticated electronic warfare devices.

U.S. Air Force recovery teams had to use large earth-moving equipment to uncover the MiG, which is over 70 feet long and weighs nearly 25 tons.

The Foxbat is known to be one of Iraq's top jet fighters. The advanced electronic reconnaissance version found by the U.S. Air Force is currently in service with the Russian air force. The MiG is capable of flying at speeds of over 2,000 miles an hour, or three times the speed of sound, and at altitudes of over 75,000 feet.

The recovery of the advanced MiG fighter is considered to be an intelligence coup by the U.S. Air Force.. The Foxbat may also be equipped with advanced Russian- and French-made electronics that were sold to Iraq during the 1990s in violation of a U..N. ban on arms sales to Baghdad.

The buried aircraft at Al Taqqadum were covered in camouflage netting, sealed and, in many cases, had their wings removed before being buried more than 10 feet beneath the Iraqi desert.

X Marks the Spot

The discovery of the buried Iraqi jet fighters illustrates the problem faced by U.S. inspection teams searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. Iraq is larger in size than California, and the massive deserts south and west of Baghdad were used by Saddam Hussein to hide weapons during the first Gulf war.

U.S. intelligence sources have already uncovered several mass grave burial sites in the open deserts with an estimated 10,000 dead hidden there. In addition, Iraq previously hid SCUD missiles, chemical weapons and biological warheads by burying them under the desert sand.

U.N. inspection teams found the weapons in the early 1990s after detailed information of the exact locations was obtained.

Top U.S. weapons inspector Dr. David Kay is known to favor human intelligence as the primary means to find Iraq's hidden treasure trove of weapons and secrets.

While there are rumors of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons being shipped to nearby Syria, the weapons may very well still remain inside Iraq buried under the vast desert wastelands.

Some critics of the Bush administration have claimed that the inability of U.S.. forces to uncover weapons of mass destruction is proof that the president misled the nation into the war with Iraq.

However, in recent days the critics have fallen silent as word quietly leaked from Iraq that major discoveries have already been made and are now being documented completely. Bush administration officials are keeping any such discoveries secret for the moment.

The following is from an unknown source

To those of you who are wondering what happened to the DHL
A300B4 coming out of Baghdad last Saturday, take a look. Aircraft was hit at 8000
FT, lost ALL hydraulics and therefore had no flight controls, actually did a missed
approach using only engine thrust and eventually (after about 16mins) landed
heavily on runway 33L at Baghdad. This was fortunate because with no steering the aircraft veered of the runway to the left, had they landed on 33R veering to the left would have taken them straight into the fire station. The aircraft then travelled about 600 metres through soft sand taking out a razor wire fence in the process, see LH engine pic, and came to
rest almost at the bottom of the sloping area between the runway and a taxiway. All three crew evacuated safely down the second slide, the first one tore on the razor wire. I flew in with a team on Tuesday in one of our Metros and some special equipment we'd had made locally in Bahrain and some provided by Airbus. Using a USAF D9 Caterpillar pulling a 100 metre cable fitted to the back end of each bogie and a nice new aircraft pushback tug with a towbaron the nose gear, we were able to remove the aircraft just on dusk on Tuesday night and towed it to an Iraqi Airways graveyard on one side of the terminal. We stayed overnight in the USAF camp on the airport and went back to the aircraft on Wednesday morning to allow the insurance survey to be completed and then secure the aircraft. Basically, LH
engine rotates in a fashion, has ingested lots of razor wire and is knackered. RH engine
has seized, probably from ingesting loads of sand at maximum reverse thrust and inlet cowl has unacceptable lip damage, probably from hitting the razor wire fence posts. The No 8 axle appears to be cracked as the wheel sits at an odd angle. The bulk of the damage is the LH wing. About 3 metres of rear spar is missing in front of the outboard flap, the wing has
bulged upwards and downwards where the initial explosion appears to have occurred, one O/B flap track is hanging in the breeze and one has a small piece of flap still attached, the rest of the flap is nonexistent. The pics show the huge crack that has occurred to the rear spar inboard of where the spar has burnt away, possibly from loads on the wing during the landing process. The front spar appears to be intact. The point of entry pics show where a projectile
entered Tank 1A, which was full of fuel, and, after it ignited, proceeded to burn away at the spar. The fuel tank ribs in the area directly in front of the O/B flap are burnt almost 50% through. The crew obviously did a fantastic job in getting the aircraft back on to the ground and one can only assume that it was most fortunate that they were not aware of
the state of the wing as they could not see it from the cockpit. It also says a lot for
the structure of the aircraft that it withstood the impact of the (whatever is finally determined to have hit it). I'm sure there will be lots of other photos and videos flying around the net, but at least these ones are genuine. The worst part for us was the airport was shut down on Wednesday and we had to be driven in an armour-plated Landcruiser Troop Carrier from Baghdad to Balad, 60 miles to the north, from where we flew back to Bahrain in our Metro
again. I trust you will all appreciate just how lucky these guys were.
Click Here To See Engerlargements and All Of The DHL Photos