Iraqi Ministry and the Black Market Weapons Deal

It seems that this little story was mostly ignored by the mainstream media. Do you remember hearing of the $40 million black market arms deal between Iraqi and Italian partners for over 100,000 weapons? I'm sure the Fox News conservative pundits covered this, no?

Associated Press:

The Associated Press has learned that Iraqi government officials were involved in the deal, apparently without the knowledge of the U.S. Baghdad command — a departure from the usual pattern of U.S.-overseen arms purchases.

Why these officials resorted to "black" channels and where the weapons were headed is unclear.

The purchase would merely have been the most spectacular example of how Iraq has become a magnet for arms traffickers and a place of vanishing weapons stockpiles and uncontrolled gun markets since the 2003 U.S. invasion and the onset of civil war.

Some guns the U.S. bought for Iraq's police and army are unaccounted for, possibly fallen into the hands of insurgents or sectarian militias.

Some guns? SOME GUNS?! I don't think 190,000 missing assault rifles and pistols qualifies as "some". In my book, that qualifies as a "shitload".

"They really have no idea where they are," Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Centre for Defence Information, told the Washington Post, which reported the GAO's findings. "It likely means that the United States is unintentionally providing weapons to bad actors."

Bad actors? Does that mean we'll see Steven Sagal or David Caruso roaming the streets of Baghdad with an AK-47 in their hands? I think you should replace "bad actors" with "the fucking insurgency", Ms. Stohl.

Here's the kicker: "...weapons distribution was rushed and failed to follow established procedures, particularly in 2004 and 2005. During that period, security training was led by General David Petraeus, now the top US commander in Iraq. "

And Petraeus, our fearless leader, the man who wrote the book on counterinsurgency, the savior of Iraq who'll give his long-awaited assessment of the results of the surge in September (which will be written by the White House), blames the missing weapons on a clerical error.

"Some percentage" of weapons the U.S. military provided to the Iraqi army and Iraqi police units were not tracked by serial number because there were no procedures in place to do so within the Iraqi units, Petraeus said in an interview broadcast [August 7th] on Fox News Radio's "Alan Colmes Show."

From a practical standpoint, Petraeus added, it was more important to get the weapons to the Iraqis as they started to enter the fight against a strong insurgency than it was to keep meticulous records.

Sure, why do we need to keep track of 190,000 weapons with silly little things like serial numbers? That's just a little technicality, right? I mean, why bother writing stuff like that down? There's no possible way that if you give an Iraqi officer or policeman a weapon, that he'll just turn around and sell it to the nearest local militia warlord to whom he's more loyal, right? That just doesn't happen, does it?

190,000 missing weapons chalked up to bookkeeping deficiencies... unbelieveable. Were these the same accountants in charge of the $9 billion missing in Iraq back in 2005 that's still unaccounted for?

What a bunch of clowns.