handshake300.jpg(Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983 via the National Security Archive.)

Because nothing says success like repeating the same old failed and dangerous idiocy:

…There are many more where those came from. At least three U.S. government agencies are now investigating the massive “disappearance” and diversion of weapons Washington intended for Iraqi government forces that instead have spread to militants and organized gangs across the region. The potential size of the traffic is stunning. A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office last month showed that since 2004, some 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols, bought with U.S. money for Iraqi security forces, have gone missing.

At retail prices in the United States, a Glock 19 costs about $500. On the black market in Turkey, it can fetch up to $3,500, according to the national police. A senior Turkish security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities, said his government estimates some 20,000 U.S.-bought Glock 9mm pistols have been brought from Iraq into his country over the last three years. “The problem on our side is that this corruption is so big they [the Iraqi and U.S. governments] cannot stop it,” said the official.

The U.S. military has investigated the problem repeatedly—and the losses look more appalling every time. Major U.S. arms transfers began when Gen. David Petraeus was commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command—Iraq (MNSTC-I), better known as Minsticky. Its mission was to train, arm and organize Iraq’s military and police forces, but the Iraqis’ weapons came via the State Department, and the supply line was actually run by private contractors. A certain sense of drama militated against good bookkeeping, too. In a recent radio interview, Petraeus—now the commander of all Coalition forces in Iraq—reminisced about helicopters ferrying weapons to Iraqi troops under fire at night in Najaf. Men were “kicking two battalions’ worth of equipment off the ramp and getting out of there while we could,” he said….  (emphasis mine)

Read the whole article.  It gets worse.  Gen. Petraeus was in charge of this failed “kick ‘em off the ‘copters” strategy.  And there is no real accounting of all of this.

We are arming by proxy the very people who are trying to cause chaos and harm to allies in the region, and to destablize what little peace is left in the Middle East and elsewhere.  With the incompetence and lax control over the Bush Administration’s pals with no-bid crony contracts and, with well over 80,000 missing and unaccounted for Glocks in play, alone, what could possibly go wrong?  Because arming Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein worked out so well for us through the years, didn’t it?

The Bush Administration:  the dangerous failure that keeps on giving, for generations to come…

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  3. Pride And Petulance
  4. The End of the Delusion in Iraq
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