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Throw Ya Gunz


Brother, have you seen thousands of guns the U.S. provided to Iraqis?

The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis, according to a federal report.
...
The U.S. military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of weapons provided to Iraqis, the inspector general found, making it impossible to track or identify any that might have fallen into the wrong hands.

 
Exactly where untracked weapons could end up was not examined in the report, although black-market arms dealers thrive on the streets of Baghdad and official Iraqi Army and police uniforms can easily be purchased as well, presumably because government shipments are intercepted or otherwise corrupted.

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|10.30.06 @ 9:39AM|

The photo of Harpo & Chico is perfect for this article.

|10.30.06 @ 10:54AM|

I have suspected for some time that the slow pace of "Iraqification" has to do with reluctance on the part of the occupying forces to actively train and arm their opponents. But maybe those weapons were all traded for falafels.

|10.30.06 @ 1:17PM|

even if they ended up all in the right hands, the right hands may well be Shite death squads and militias who officially work for the government.

|10.30.06 @ 2:07PM|

I smell a great money making opportunity. Fly to Iraq, buy arms from the falafel stands, ship them to DC and sell inside the "gun free zone". The only good gun is a cheap gun.

|10.30.06 @ 3:15PM|

As opposed to all the licensed and registered AK-47s floating around?

The optimism of the gun-control folks continues to amaze me.

|10.31.06 @ 12:54AM|

plato told

him:he couldn't
believe it(jesus

told him;he
wouldn't believe
it)lao

tsze
certainly told
him,and general
(yes

mam)
sherman;
and even
(believe it
or

not)you
told him:i told
him;we told him
(he didn't believe it,no

sir)it took
a nipponized bit of
the old sixth

avenue
el;in the top of his head:to tell

him


e.e. cummings
1944

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

†1 Sherman - William Tecumseh Sherman, a general of the Union Army in the Civil War who burned down and cleared Atlanta of its population, then laid a path of destruction from there onto Savannah. He is quoted as saying "War is Hell".

†2 sixth avenue el - the elevated railway which once ran along Sixth Avenue of New York City but was dismantled in 1938-9. The scrapped metal was presumably sold to Japan.

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