The Cellar - Italy Probe Unearths Huge Iraq Arms Deal

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Italy Probe Unearths Huge Iraq Arms Deal

PERUGIA, Italy (AP) - In a hidden corner of Rome's busy Fiumicino Airport, police dug quietly through a traveler's checked baggage, looking for smuggled drugs. What they found instead was a catalog of weapons, a clue to something bigger.

Their discovery led anti-Mafia investigators down a monthslong trail of telephone and e-mail intercepts, into the midst of a huge black-market transaction, as Iraqi and Italian partners haggled over shipping more than 100,000 Russian-made automatic weapons into the bloodbath of Iraq.
http://apnews.myway.com//article/200...D8QVLVCG0.html

Or let the Mafia control Iraq.

Well understood is that America provided weapons that have fueled an Iraqi insurgency. Washington Post on 6 August 2007 put numbers to that supply.

Quote:

Weapons Given to Iraq Are Missing
GAO Estimates 30% of Arms Are Unaccounted For
The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

The report from the Government Accountability Office indicates that U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops. The highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons was 14,000, in a report issued last year by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

The United States has spent $19.2 billion trying to develop Iraqi security forces since 2003, the GAO said, including at least $2.8 billion to buy and deliver equipment.

We've discussed that before, but it doesn't explain what was going on with this deal. It certainly stinks to high heaven.

Great, now I'll have to order my salads with "Freedom Dressing" ... "Do you have Creamy Freedom?"