disrupter
09-13-2007, 07:45 AM
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about General Petraeus and the missing arms, the missing weapons?
ARUN GUPTA: Also during his tenure, 190,000 weapons went missing. These were Pentagon weapons that were supposed to go to Iraqi Security Forces. A report came out last month stating that there was no proper bookkeeping done. There were more weapons, but what it found was that 190,000 assault rifles and handguns, along with all sorts of body armor and other military equipment, had just completely gone off track. There were no records of it kept. Such simple things as recording the serial numbers were not done.
And, of course, the fear is that this is just going to turn up all sorts of places. The Turkish government has already claimed that it has seized more than 1,000 of these guns in Turkey that are being used by anyone, from criminal enterprises to anti-government militants. And there’s also reports that they’ve turned up as far away as Italy.http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/12/1410237
It almost sounds like the US is intentionally inflaming Iraq by dumping umpteen thousands of weapons accounted so they WILL end up in terrorist, criminal, & genocidal as well as civil war hands.
Is there really any other explanation than that for not even bothering to track serial numbers?
ARUN GUPTA: Yeah. What we were talking about two-and-a-half years ago was Petraeus’s role in helping to set up the Special Police Commandos. In 2004, 2005, he was given the mission to train all Iraq military and police forces. And, in fact, in July 2004, Newsweek had this cover of him, saying that Petraeus was going to train Iraqis to take over the fight. Now, the reality is, is that was, of course, a failure, because three years later he was back with an escalation of US forces.
Now, one of the key things that Petraeus did was they decided -- him and his command decided -- that they were going to create this paramilitary force, the Special Police Commandos. They armed them. They funded them. They trained them. And they also issued the usual denials: “Oh, we're not giving them any weapons. This is an Iraqi initiative.” And so, now he’s saying the same thing with the Sunni militias.
So, anyway, the Special Police Commandos quickly morphed into Shiite death squads that were used against the Sunni insurgency and against Sunnis, in general, throughout Iraq. And this played a key role in terms of stoking and fomenting the civil war, because you had these death squads wearing government uniforms, being armed and trained by the US, going around killing Sunnis randomly. It generally alienated the Sunni Arab population from the government and drove them into the arms of the resistance.
The troops he trained aren't capable
& now he is handing cash to, & effectively arming [with his own blackmarketed weapons] death squads.
Let alone criminal gangs, al qaeda, and ethnic & civil warriors.
Either he is a traitor to the American people or he is so incompetent that he is effectively a traitor to the American people.
Don't people understand that the chaos in Iraq is like a tar-baby?
the more you fight it the more stuck to it you get?
Quick sand is another apt metaphor.
One of the few constructive things we can do is get the surrounding countries engaged,
the less dumping of US arms & training we provide the less responsible we are for the inevitable civil war & the likely less violent it will be.
Understandably Iran & Saudi Arabia will arm their various allied factions,
but at least the killing won't be done with US distributed/dumped weapons & utilizing our training.
The sooner we leave the sooner we can wash our hands & eventually our conscious of it.
It may be sad, but it is beyond our control.
Now we are just making a bad situation worse.
ARUN GUPTA: Also during his tenure, 190,000 weapons went missing. These were Pentagon weapons that were supposed to go to Iraqi Security Forces. A report came out last month stating that there was no proper bookkeeping done. There were more weapons, but what it found was that 190,000 assault rifles and handguns, along with all sorts of body armor and other military equipment, had just completely gone off track. There were no records of it kept. Such simple things as recording the serial numbers were not done.
And, of course, the fear is that this is just going to turn up all sorts of places. The Turkish government has already claimed that it has seized more than 1,000 of these guns in Turkey that are being used by anyone, from criminal enterprises to anti-government militants. And there’s also reports that they’ve turned up as far away as Italy.http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/12/1410237
It almost sounds like the US is intentionally inflaming Iraq by dumping umpteen thousands of weapons accounted so they WILL end up in terrorist, criminal, & genocidal as well as civil war hands.
Is there really any other explanation than that for not even bothering to track serial numbers?
ARUN GUPTA: Yeah. What we were talking about two-and-a-half years ago was Petraeus’s role in helping to set up the Special Police Commandos. In 2004, 2005, he was given the mission to train all Iraq military and police forces. And, in fact, in July 2004, Newsweek had this cover of him, saying that Petraeus was going to train Iraqis to take over the fight. Now, the reality is, is that was, of course, a failure, because three years later he was back with an escalation of US forces.
Now, one of the key things that Petraeus did was they decided -- him and his command decided -- that they were going to create this paramilitary force, the Special Police Commandos. They armed them. They funded them. They trained them. And they also issued the usual denials: “Oh, we're not giving them any weapons. This is an Iraqi initiative.” And so, now he’s saying the same thing with the Sunni militias.
So, anyway, the Special Police Commandos quickly morphed into Shiite death squads that were used against the Sunni insurgency and against Sunnis, in general, throughout Iraq. And this played a key role in terms of stoking and fomenting the civil war, because you had these death squads wearing government uniforms, being armed and trained by the US, going around killing Sunnis randomly. It generally alienated the Sunni Arab population from the government and drove them into the arms of the resistance.
The troops he trained aren't capable
& now he is handing cash to, & effectively arming [with his own blackmarketed weapons] death squads.
Let alone criminal gangs, al qaeda, and ethnic & civil warriors.
Either he is a traitor to the American people or he is so incompetent that he is effectively a traitor to the American people.
Don't people understand that the chaos in Iraq is like a tar-baby?
the more you fight it the more stuck to it you get?
Quick sand is another apt metaphor.
One of the few constructive things we can do is get the surrounding countries engaged,
the less dumping of US arms & training we provide the less responsible we are for the inevitable civil war & the likely less violent it will be.
Understandably Iran & Saudi Arabia will arm their various allied factions,
but at least the killing won't be done with US distributed/dumped weapons & utilizing our training.
The sooner we leave the sooner we can wash our hands & eventually our conscious of it.
It may be sad, but it is beyond our control.
Now we are just making a bad situation worse.