Today's NY Times by James Glanz and Eric Schmitt report on the widening investigation into the thousands of AK-47's and other Army materials that are unaccounted for. I have conjectured about why this story has not gained more traction over the last 2 months since it was reported. In 2004 and 2005, David Petraeus was responsible for logistics for guns, ammunitions, helmets body armor and loads of other goodies that went to the Iraqi police and security forces. Almost 50% of it can now not be traced as to where it went. Below are more details
I first saw the article today online. I did see one comment by Peanut that reported on the article early this morning. If I have missed a diary on the story, please alert me and I will delete this one.
The investigation involves the Army, DOJ, and FBI. Sounds pretty big, right. Under the guidance of Gen David Petraeus, the army in 2004 and 2005 was arming the Iraqi police and other forces. The problem was that there were evidently no records kept.
In an interview on Aug. 18, General Petraeus said that with ill-equipped Iraqi security forces confronting soaring violence across the country in 2004 and 2005, he made a decision not to wait for formal tracking systems to be put in place before distributing the weapons.
"We made a decision to arm guys who wanted to fight for their country," General Petraeus said.
Involved in this fiasco was his loyal aide Levonda Selph. She acted as the Pony Express of moving the arms out into the hands of our friends or our enemies. We don't know because supposedly there are no records. That's right! We have 105,000 AK-47's missing from our inventory and no serial numbers or other records of where they went.
A quick google takes you to this Defend America site. It is at this site that we may find the root of the problem.
Preparation for operations began in March with the renovation of nine warehouses and an office building. An inventory management system called Exceed was also established; a private contractor now manages the system.
So in March of 2005 we assign a private contractor to work with an inventory system called Exceed in order to track the flow of equipment, guns, ammunition's etc through Taji Depot. Doesn't this seem to counter the claim of Gen David Petraeus above? Maybe, the program didn't work. Maybe, someone failed to enter the information. Maybe, they were too busy taking in the money for the equipment they sold.
Again, the article does state that thus far, no one has accused Gen David Petraeus of any wrong doing. John Warner has been one of the leaders from the Senate into some of these problems since he became aware over a year ago. I just find it odd that Gen David Petraeus was selected to be the leader of the war effort even knowing that his skills for maintaining serial numbers for AK-47's that he might hand out to Iraqi's was suspect. Maybe, he didn't know what Levonda Selph was doing. But she was a senior aide. You wouldn't just trust anyone to hand out billions of $$ worth of equipment.
I also find it interesting that DOJ has been involved in this investigation. I don't remember any questions about this to Alberto Gonzales. I wonder if he shared this information with Cheney or Bush over the last few weeks. But, I won't go there.
This article is written very carefully. As a blogger that was around during the Watergate era, you learn to read between the lines. Journalist were notorious for leaking tiny bits of information as they could confirm the story with more sources. This story is complicated and involved with many fraud cases from Iraq. Maybe, when Gen David Petraeus reports to Congress, he will request more monies for materials. We might especially ask for armor and humvees since we have given so much ammunition to our enemies.
Most right wingers should understand this. We have no damn clue what we are doing in Iraq. I vote for NO MORE MONEY for this war machine until we get someone honest and competent to run the ship.