Taking a HARD look at the Business of Politics

The Plog Politicians love to hate.

American Arms kill American Soldiers in Iraq?

As Congress is finally talking about cutting Iraq purse strings, one of the most compelling reasons to do so are the reports coming out of Iraq from the Government Accountability Office, which tell the story of small arms shipments to Iraq that were meant for Iraq security forces and, because of a lack of oversight and poor management by certain Army officials, General Petraeus among them, ended up on the black market. “Many of those weapons were issued when Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the top American commander in Iraq, was responsible for training and equipping Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005. General Petraeus has said that he opted to arm the Iraqi forces as quickly as possible, before tracking systems were fully in place.” Now we know why American Soldiers called him General Betray-Us.

Reading the NYT article about this, it’s evident a whole black market industry developed around this apparent “mistake” on the General’s part, though he’s far from the only officer involved, and US contractors also played a part in this on both sides- by selling guns meant for US allies and security teams, and by purchasing those guns on the black market.

There was one warehouse, the Baghdad Police Academy Armory, where cases and cases of small arms were sold on the black market by an Iraqi businessman who was approved for distribution by the US command. This warehouse was an “open secret” in Baghdad. It was run by American Logistics Services (Lee Dynamics International), which was later suspended from doing business in Iraq amid accusations that the Company received contracts to work in Iraq after paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to secure those contracts.

Another slap in the face to honest American Army personnel came when they found caches of US weapons in the insurgency camps. Even more chilling is the fact that many US weapons were purchased twice by taxpayer dollars–

“There were times we would issue a batch of weapons and within 10 days they would show up at the Enemy Weapons Purchase Program,” Major Cox, who is on his second tour in Baghdad, wrote by e-mail, referring to a military effort to buy guns from the streets.

It’s time to bring our soldiers home. If Congress doesn’t grow the Brass Ones to do it this time there will be blood on the streets come next major election day.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Profiteering, Petraeus, Government Accountability Office