Pentagon Admits 190,000 Weapons Are Missing In Iraq

The Independent, a newspaper based in Britain, published the followers study Tuesday from its correspondent, Prince Rupert Cornwell, in Washington. It is follows studies on CNN and other mass media mercantile establishments that the Pentagon acknowledges losing path of 190,000 assault rifles and handguns supplied by the United States to Iraki security military units in 2004 and 2005. The Pentagon additional states that the weaponry may have got fallen into the custody of insurgents.

The disclosure, by the guard dog Government Accountability business office (GAO) intends that the Pentagon makes not cognize what happened to roughly a 3rd of the weaponry it have provided to develop and fit Iraki military units - an attempt important to restoring some color of order in Iraq.

The unaccounted-for arms include 80,000 handguns plus an estimated 110,000 Soviet-made AK-47 assault rifles. Amnesty International studies that, during the same old age of 2004 and 2005, more than than 350,000 similar arms were removed from Bosnia And Herzegovina and Srbija by private contractors working for the Pentagon and sent to Iraq.

In addition, 135,000 pieces of organic structure armor and 115,000 helmets have got also disappeared, again perhaps to insurgents. To date, the United States have spent more than than $19 billion on developing the Iraki security forces, including almost $3 billion for weapons. (I can't assist thought how much wellness care, school books, Bridges and clinics that money would have got bought the taxpayers of the USA.)

According to the GAO, the statistical distribution of the arms was "haphazard and rushed," accusals the Pentagon makes not dispute. Ironically, during the old age under scrutiny, the arms programme was headed by General Saint David Petraeus.

He's the adult male whose study we all expect with bated breath in September -- the adult male whose version of the success or failure of the Republic Of Iraq warfare is the axis on which we tilt.

Our Congress, loath to stop the warfare thus far, maintains waiting for a "watershed moment."

How many such as minutes have got already passed while this state sat lulled by the prevarications on Fox News? How many such as minutes have got got been ignored by the Pentagon and the Congress, when any competent grouping would have said ENOUGH, THIS IS THE time TO end IT, once and for all?

In my view, missing 190,000 arms is not the public presentation of a military in control. It is the type of error made by incompetent, panicked, disorganized amateurs.