US Shipment of 200,000 AK-47'S goes 'missing'

[shance]

HAVE 200,000 AK47S FALLEN INTO THE HANDS OF IRAQ TERRORISTS?
FEARS OVER SECRET U.S. ARMS SHIPMENT


"Air traffic controllers in Baghdad have no record of supposed July 2004, July 2005 flights 10 May 2006 Some 200,000 guns the US sent to Iraqi security forces may have been smuggled to terrorists... The 99-tonne cache of AK47s was to have been secretly flown out from a US base in Bosnia. But the four planeloads of arms have vanished. Orders for the deal to go ahead were given by the US Department of Defense. But the work was contracted out via a complex web of private arms traders... A separate probe claiming that thousands of guns meant for Iraq's police and army instead went to al-Qaeda ... This year a newspaper claimed two UK firms were involved in a deal in which thousands of guns for Iraqi forces were re-routed to al-Qaeda. One arms broker's lawyer is said to have admitted that nearly all of a shipment of 1,500 AK-47s went missing. And a US official said £270million of equipment could not be traced."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=17055497&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=have-200-000-missing-ak47s-fallen-into-the-hands-of-iraq-terrorists---name_page.html

[MadMaddie]

1. Guess it wasn't that secret after all.....

More incompetence...So now the AK47s are going to be used against our troops...sigh..

[shance]

2. Incompetence? 200,000 AK 47's just get 'lost' when we occupy Iraq?

I've never heard of someone just losing 200,000 assault weapons.

[Selatius]

3. You should've seen what got lost after the Soviet Union collapsed

Billions of dollars worth of Soviet war machines and guns were smuggled or stolen from both Russia and the ex-Soviet republics. Disgruntled soldiers coupled with long periods of inadequate or no pay led to this. Most of the weapons went to fuel hot wars in the third world from South America to the Middle East. It was a bonanza for "free-lance" arms dealers.

The US doesn't help the situation either. When we evacuated Lebanon in the 1980s, we found it was cheaper to simply leave the M-16s behind and order new ones instead of boxing them up and shipping them home. You can bet somebody made a pretty penny selling those thousands of guns on the black market.

[shance]

4. The point is they weren't lost, they were given to someone who would

perpetuate more war so those at the top could profit.

[Selatius]

6. Oh, I agree completely

The problem is there's so many weapons systems around now as a legacy of the last 50 years that more than a few have now decided black market arms dealing is the way to go. The profit margins are simply too big for them to ignore.

Unfortunately, because the US is also the world's largest arms dealer, we kind of shoot ourselves in the foot at the same time as some of those weapons circulate into the hands of folks we didn't want to arm in the first place, but our clients who we did arm decided to sell it to them when they were done with their wars. Nevermind the fact that we use some of these black market arms dealers to supply dubious allies in the past. One glaring example is arming the folks who later became the core of Al Qaeda.

[RC]

7. Is this a good example of arming everyone so we all will be safer?

If it works here, why not 'over there' also?

[benEzra]

8. Those guns aren't legal here in the USA (n/t)

[RC]

9. What does being legal or not have to do with my point?

[w4rma]

5. Those are enough automatic rifles to give to every man woman and child

in a small American city ... or a small Iraqi city.