Surge of Weapons in Iraq

[ck4829]

Since the U.S. invasion in 2003, when looters ransacked armories and deserting Iraqi soldiers took their rifles home, this bloodied land has been flooded by a sea of weapons fed from both the legal and illegal market.

Besides more than 700,000 rifles and other weapons arming the new Iraqi army and police, at least seven million guns are believed in the hands of civilians, including insurgents and sectarian militias, in a nation of 27 million, the Geneva-based research group Small Arms Survey reports.

More are pouring in: The Pentagon said July 26 that some 122,000 fresh weapons are in the official supply pipeline for Iraqi security forces. Many more come via black-market channels.

Some glimpses into the Iraqi arms bazaar:

...

"Large portions" of the equipment, including guns, supplied to police in the western province of Anbar are missing from police stations, Marine officers told the U.S. Congress in May. The Pentagon says the Interior Ministry's accounting of police equipment is unreliable.

...

Daily reports from Iraqi and U.S. forces tell of smuggled arms from Iran, Syria or elsewhere entering Iraq in trucks, on motorcycles, even on donkeys' backs. Last January, police knocked on an oil tanker's false bottom and found that a four-tanker convoy was transporting machine guns in hidden compartments.

...

Turkey complained last month that U.S. weapons supplied to Iraqi security forces were turning up in the hands of anti-Turkish Kurdish separatists based in northern Iraq. Last year, Iran said U.S. weapons were flowing from Iraq to "disruptive" elements, presumably meaning Iranian Kurds.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070812/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_arms_bazaar_1

[RC]

1. What do you expect when we (read United States) are supplying the world with

billions of dollars worth of killing machines a year to who ever has the money.