this is half of all the rifles we’ve sent to the iraqi army. i’m wrestling with how to interpret this. are we arming the bad guys at the precise rate we’re arming the good guys?
I doubt it’s quite that bad. It’s bad, but I would bet good money that a LOT of the unaccounted for AK47’s found there way into the hands of people just trying to protect themselves.
So, my thinking is that we are still arming the good guys at at least a slightly higher rate than we’re arming the bad guys.
Now please light a fire under Rappstar, and get the forum fixed.
Links to the story, please?
As to the part about the U.S. "sending Ak-47s to the Iraqi army, are we buying them from someone and sending them, as the U.S. doesn’t to the best of my knowledge, manufacture that weapon? Is this covered in the original article?
Thanks.
Slowman, how does anything having to do with the administration, funding, equipping, managing, supply chain, distribution, warehousing, of Iraq actually bewilder you or anyone? That fiasco is the biggest SNAFU this planet has ever seen. If I was to sit and one at a time light dollar bill$ on fire all day, I could not burn as much money as we are wasting in Iraq.
But there is one man who talks to God who knows that it’s all going to be OK…
Here is a couple of links:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/06/iraq.weapons/index.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6932710.stm
http://www.foxnews.com/ (can’t link to it directly but it is on the first page)
not all of the missing weapons will be in enemy hands - the report just says it is not possible to account for them.
here’s one of many articles. the reason i got to thinking about the 190,000 number, which is widely reported, is that there are only a quarter million or so iraqi troops. i’m surprised that number is *only *half.
Really, the country is awash in weapons. I’ve no doubt that the hundreds of thousands of Saddam-era conscripts who walked away when we invaded probably kept their AKs, or sold them to someone who wanted one. The country was full of weapons depots that weren’t guarded appropriately after Saddam fell, and they were subsequently looted and all those weapons ended up somewhere, in someone’s hands. So another 190,000 AKs are missing? Will it really make a difference?
CIA/Administration probably had secretly allocated some/most of these to people the general US public would not like to know we arm… This is a convient way to maybe cover it up, ala Iran-Contra affair. Just got exposed way faster this time. I’d imagine someone in the government knows exactly where these are.
Although… 1% of my mind makes me think we are too stupid to know and did lose them, but I’m heavily leaning w/ my original hypothesis.
At this point, I think I’m just about out of outrage regarding this war.
You can watch one of any number of documentaries on the subject, including a very good one on Frontline, where the discussion of the sheer incompetence of the Administration to plan or manage the effort has been exhausted ad nauseum. From deliberately not planning for the post-war because any difficulties that might arise would be construed as being against the war, to hiring 25-yr old political hacks for the CPA whose only qualifications were that they voted for GWB and submitted their resumes to the CPA, to the institutionalized torture effort, to the haphazard purchasing and allocation efforts, this might simply be the most fucked government enterprise in the history of government.
The irony, of course, is that Republicans have no problem arguing out of both sides of their mouths - government is bad, yet we want to control it and make sure its incompetent, but we think government is still good enough to administer an unplanned war, and of course we need to keep this war going as long as possible, keeping open a floodgate of government spending, although we don’t believe in government spending. We want to private the war effort, but our vendors have continually embezzled, fucked up, and overspent. Is it any wonder that nobody understands what they say or believe any of it? They can’t even tell you what they believe, much less what they “stand for.”
What about the equipment missing from the CDC? Is it being used to manufacture bio-weapons?
"That fiasco is the biggest SNAFU this planet has ever seen. "
Don’t know much about history do ya? Read a book once and while.
It’s a clear showing of fucking up but that number is TINY compared to how many AKs are on the market right now. Your local warlord can pick one up for as low as 10 bucks.
Thanks for the link.
On the brighter side, the CNN link stated that only 110,000 of the 190,000 AK47s were unaccounted for. Why does everyone always go for the worst scenario?
Two points of interest, the AKs were from Saddams stockpiles, and contained no serial numbers making tracking very difficult even under normal conditions.
New weapons being issued appear to be U.S. manufactured and contain something akin to RFIDs which should improve tracking.
I’d also have to agree with a previous poster, that given the number of weapons already in the country, and flooding in from neighboring countries significantly dilutes the issue.
Lastly, given the track record of our government being able to track resources, equipment, and prevent fraud under special circumstances such as post Katrina Louisiana (hell, for that matter even in day to day operations such as tracking government vehicles, lap tops, or even Social security benefits), what makes anyone think that any government would do better in post Saddam Iraq?
What concerns me more is the unmentioned, but highly frequent occurrence of insurgents or militant groups appearing in brand new, full uniforms of either Iraqi or U.S. origin, conducting thier violence.