Department of Understated Headlines

Eric Schmitt and Ginger Thompson bring us "Broken Supply Channel Sent Weapons for Iraq Astray" which sounds pretty dull. The story, though, is not:

By all accounts, the businessman, Kassim al-Saffar, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, did well at distributing the Pentagon-supplied weapons from the Baghdad Police Academy armory he managed for a military contractor. But, co-workers say, he also turned the armory into his own private arms bazaar with the seeming approval of some American officials and executives, selling AK-47 assault rifles, Glock pistols and heavy machine guns to anyone with cash in hand — Iraqi militias, South African security guards and even American contractors.

“This was the craziest thing in the world,” said John Tisdale, a retired Air Force master sergeant who managed an adjacent warehouse. “They were taking weapons away by the truckload.”

It seems to me that when you're trying to establish security in a foreign country that making sure your own people aren't complicit in supply weapons to the enemy ought ought to be a pretty high priority.

Comments

Iraqi militias, South African security guards and even American contractors

I know things have really gone downhill but when American contractors make the "even" part of that list ... jeez things are REALLY bad

Posted by huxley | November 12, 2007 8:18 AM

It's only bad if you assume there's some political or military reason to be there. If the whole point of the adventure is to redistribute wealth from American taxpayers to arms suppliers, one more channel isn''t a bad thing.

Posted by MikeJ | November 12, 2007 8:24 AM

What a Libertarian paradise we have made of Iraq!

Posted by rea | November 12, 2007 8:24 AM

Some US officials have to be getting kickbacks. Follow the money.

Posted by Rich | November 12, 2007 8:30 AM

This was probably the idea all along: blow the place up, first with the invasion and then through the sponsorship and enabling of militias and government corruption. Perhaps the problem is not that Bush didn't heed Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn" warning, but that all along he fully intended to break and then own Iraq. The country seems to have realized that Bush is both stupid and incompetent as a leader, but I don't think we've realized that he is a bad man whose intentions were never as good as his dimwitted cowboy persona would have us believe. He's the kind of guy who tears up at commercials featuring kittens while signing a secret memo that authorizes the torture of kittens.

Posted by tinisoli | November 12, 2007 8:47 AM

Dad, who has found a kind word for W recently, worked the meet-n-greet for the Carlyle Group. To America's everlasting shame: an ex-president as an arm's dealer.

Shame is dead, though. And there's money to be made.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | November 12, 2007 9:20 AM

There's money to be made? That 2001 money has now lost 30% of its value...was that part of the plan too???

Posted by tin foil | November 12, 2007 9:38 AM

Tin foil, you're assuming the people in question keep their money in dollars. Also, if you're able to increase your wealth by many times, a drop of 30 percent is a small price to pay even if it does affect you.

Posted by KCinDC | November 12, 2007 10:27 AM

There's money to be made? That 2001 money has now lost 30% of its value...was that part of the plan too???

Corruption != omniscience.

And as KCinDC has pointed out, if you've made a fistful of dollars, you don't begrudge the dimes of overhead.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | November 12, 2007 12:52 PM

Tinisoli hits it on the head:

"The country seems to have realized that Bush is both stupid and incompetent as a leader, but I don't think we've realized that he is a bad man whose intentions were never as good as his dimwitted cowboy persona would have us believe."

One hundred percent correct.

The problem is that the US public is too primate to believe that its leaders that they elected are as corrupt as they are - because that would mean the US public is as stupid and cowardly as it is.

Well, they are. And it is.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 12, 2007 8:52 PM