13,180 semiautomatic pistols, 751 assault rifles and 99 machine guns. And rocket-propelled grenades. It's likely they'll be seen again, of course, only in the hands of insurgents and death squads. "Audit reveals 14,000 arms given to Iraq are missing," by John Heilprin for AP:
WASHINGTON -- Nearly one of every 25 weapons the military bought for Iraqi security forces is missing, a government audit said Sunday. Many others cannot be repaired because parts or technical manuals are lacking.
[...]
The Pentagon cannot account for 14,030 weapons -- almost 4 percent of the semiautomatic pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other weapons it began supplying to Iraq since the end of 2003, according to a report from the office of the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
The missing weapons will not be tracked easily: The Defense Department registered the serial numbers of only about 10,000 of the 370,251 weapons it provided -- less than 3 percent.
The Pentagon spent $133 million on the weapons, and "the capacity of the Iraqi government to provide national security and public order is partly contingent on arming the Iraqi security forces, under the ministries of defense and interior," the report notes. Military officials insisted the weapons either had to be new or never issued to a previous soldier.
By December, the U.S. military had planned to put those weapons in the hands of 325,500 personnel.
Missing from the Defense Department’s inventory books were 13,180 semiautomatic pistols, 751 assault rifles and 99 machine guns, according to an audit requested by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The audit does not make clear at what point the weapons were lost. But it notes that "there could have been undetected losses" before weapons were ever issued to Iraqi security forces -- who also lack many needed spare parts, technical repair manuals and arms maintenance personnel.
Well then the training and arming of the enemy in nearly complete.
Nice. Somebody didn't write down serial numbers.
Is there a war being fought or is this a farce?
So, in the end, our brilliant project to set up 'democracy' may accomplish no more than arming the insurgents, and perhaps terrorists. Just as we did in Afghanistan, Iran, ...
Well, let's look on the bright side. No tanks, planes or artillery have gotten lost in Iraq. Yet.
How odd.
Just yesterday CNN ran a special castigating the Bush Administration. It centered on hairy, scowling Iraqui Police brass whining about how they need more weapons, ammmo & training, and asap.
The Police Chief said, given that, he could end the "sectarian violence" in 6 months.
* 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 ** 33:21 *
This Chief may be salivating for a good ol' time Sharia Slaughter, just like in Saddam's heyday.
Heavily armed Sunnis in a slaughter-fest up against heavily armed Shia.
Maybe we should supply the guns & ammo...
This is off topic, but importanat. Iran is promising to detonate 6,000 of our own nuclear warheads. Read this from the Regime Change Iran website,very scary.http://regimechangeiniran.com/2006/10/an-iranian-sales-pitch/
Look on the bright side. The military counts every damn thing there is, even to the point of charging our wounded soldiers for equipment and clothing lost when they are wounded.
An organization that efficient in the details did not lose those serial numbers by accident. Those "missing" weapons are not attributed for a reason.
Texan here is cynical enough to suspect that we are secretly arming both sides in the civil insurrection going on, and we need to be able to deny it when those weapons are captured.
The smart money in the war will arm both sides, with a little extra help going to the weak side at any given time. And I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut that those AK-47's were manufactured by the Skoda works in the Czech Republic, and a similar outfit in Bulgaria, those countries being our allies in the "war on terror" and beneficiaries of our treasury.
I don't know what the pistols are, but I suspect Browning Hi-power's.
Let's you and him fight!!
Have a nice day, Mohammad!!
I can only imagine what a ball of confusion it is in Iraq.I'm surprised more weapons aren't missing.