This little article caught my eye a little while ago.
The US government cannot account for 190,000 weapons issued to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to an investigation carried out by the Government Accountability Office.
Oh...so, we've LOST that many weapons in a country where it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell friend from foe. This is unacceptable!
Join me below for some more info on this... we may be arming the insurgents...?
According to the July 31 report, the military "cannot fully account for about 110,000 AK-47 assault rifles, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armour and 115,000 helmets reported as issued to Iraqi forces."
The weapons disappeared from records between June 2004 and September 2005, as the military struggled to rebuild the disbanded Iraqi forces from scratch amid increasing attacks from Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.
In other words, we have NO IDEA where any of this stuff is! Never mind the insane amount of money this means went sucking down the drain... we have NO idea who has all this weaponry.
Or maybe we know where some of it has turned up:
Last month, Turkey raised concerns over reports that separatist Kurdish guerrillas launching cross-border raids from northern Iraq had received US-supplied guns supposedly destined for Iraqi security forces.
Oops... nothing like contributing to a civil war... endangering our own troops... we could be giving the insurgents the body armor coalition forces should be wearing. Again, this is unacceptable.
But surely we've fixed that problem--gotten the loss of equipment under control? Well, maybe not:
From the GAO report: "Since 2006 the command has placed greater emphasis on collecting the supporting documents. However, GAO's review of the January 2007 property books found continuing problems with missing and incomplete records."
Our military folks serving in Iraq deserve better...the Iraqi citizens deserve better... and we the citizens of the United States of America deserve better. Incompetence is deadly- and expensive.