| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"johac" |
| Date: |
13 Aug 2007 12:30:12 AM |
| Object: |
About those missing guns... |
What hath BushCo wrought?
---
How Extremists Are Getting U.S.-Bought Guns
How firearms intended for Iraqi security forces are winding up in the
hands of extremists across the region.
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - On the afternoon of Feb. 5, 2006, at a small
church in the Turkish Black Sea city of Trabzon, Father Andrea Santoro
was kneeling in prayer when a bullet from an Austrian-made Glock 9mm
pistol hit him in the back and pierced his heart. The soft-spoken
60-year-old Italian priest, who lived in poverty ministering to the
city's tiny Christian community, slumped to the floor, and the killer
squeezed off another round. "Allahu akbar!"‹"God is great"‹said the
shooter, a 15-year-old boy with a grudge against the West.
In May of last year, another Muslim fanatic, guns blazing, attacked
Turkey's supreme court in Ankara. Four justices were wounded and one was
killed. The assassin's weapons of choice were a pair of Glock pistols.
The attacks were no mystery. What puzzled Turkish police was the
weapons' origin. Glocks are high-quality sidearms, but by last year they
had practically become common street weapons in Turkey. More than 1,000
had been taken from criminals, guerrillas, terrorists and assassins all
over the country, and authorities believed tens of thousands more had
found their way onto the black market‹but from where? The Austrian
government repeatedly checked the serial numbers of the murder weapons.
The manufacturer informed Ankara that the pistols were consigned
originally to " 'US Mission Iraq' [formerly the Coalition Provisional
Authority], address: Republican Presidential Compound, Ministry of the
Interior, Baghdad, Iraq."
There are many more where those came from. At least three U.S.
government agencies are now investigating the massive "disappearance"
and diversion of weapons Washington intended for Iraqi government forces
that instead have spread to militants and organized gangs across the
region. The potential size of the traffic is stunning. A report by the
U.S. Government Accountability Office last month showed that since 2004,
some 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols, bought with U.S. money
for Iraqi security forces, have gone missing.
At retail prices in the United States, a Glock 19 costs about $500. On
the black market in Turkey, it can fetch up to $3,500, according to the
national police. A senior Turkish security official, speaking on
condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities, said his
government estimates some 20,000 U.S.-bought Glock 9mm pistols have been
brought from Iraq into his country over the last three years. "The
problem on our side is that this corruption is so big they [the Iraqi
and U.S. governments] cannot stop it," said the official.
The U.S. military has investigated the problem repeatedly‹and the losses
look more appalling every time. Major U.S. arms transfers began when
Gen. David Petraeus was commander of the Multi-National Security
Transition Command‹Iraq (MNSTC-I), better known as Minsticky. Its
mission was to train, arm and organize Iraq's military and police
forces, but the Iraqis' weapons came via the State Department, and the
supply line was actually run by private contractors. A certain sense of
drama militated against good bookkeeping, too. In a recent radio
interview, Petraeus‹now the commander of all Coalition forces in
Iraq‹reminisced about helicopters ferrying weapons to Iraqi troops under
fire at night in Najaf. Men were "kicking two battalions' worth of
equipment off the ramp and getting out of there while we could," he said.
But there were also signs of problems more serious than bad
record-keeping. One of Petraeus's subordinates, Col. Theodore
Westhusing, had taken leave from his position as a professor of ethics
at West Point to serve a six-month tour as commander of the unit
training counterterrorism and Special Operations Forces. By the spring
of 2005, Westhusing had grown increasingly concerned about the
corruption he thought he saw in the program. He was especially upset
after receiving an anonymous letter on May 19, 2005, which claimed there
was outright fraud by government contractors. Among the alleged
problems: failure to account for almost 200 guns.
Westhusing passed the letter up the chain of command. A few days later
he wrote a formal memo saying he thought the charges were off-base. But
at the same time his conversations and e-mails with his family members
became cryptic and he seemed concerned for his safety. Colleagues said
he looked exhausted and preoccupied. On June 5, 2005, Westhusing was
found dead in his temporary quarters at Camp Dublin near Baghdad
airport, apparently having shot himself with his own pistol. "I cannot
support a [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuses and
liars," he wrote in a note found near his body. "Death before being
dishonored any more. Trust is essential‹I don't know who to trust
anymore."
Military investigators concluded that Westhusing's death was a suicide
and that the various complaints he leveled against commanders and
contractors were "unfounded." Westhusing had had trouble fitting in with
other officers, became increasingly withdrawn and seemed depressed when
he thought his tour might be extended. But his older brother doesn't
believe he killed himself, especially not, as it happened, on his
mother's birthday. "Everything he talked about and reported up his chain
of command is coming out now: contract fraud, stolen guns and equipment,
issues with killings," says Tim Westhusing, who works for IBM in
Oklahoma.
General Petraeus declined to comment for the record on the death of
Westhusing or the diversion of arms. A senior Pentagon official, talking
on background because of the issue's sensitivity, said that a few weeks
ago Defense Secretary Robert Gates sent the department's general
counsel, Jim Haynes, to "meet with the Turks, hear their concerns and
convey that we take them very seriously." The senior official added that
in December 2005 the Pentagon launched a "wide-ranging"
investigation‹which he said was still ongoing‹into corruption among
contractors in Iraq.
But the first detailed investigation of the missing weapons was
conducted last summer by Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for
Iraq Reconstruction. His team found there was a special problem with
Glocks: 13,180 were missing, worth as much as $46 million on the black
market. The more recent GAO study puts the total figure for missing
pistols closer to 80,000.
Neither report comes to any conclusion about where those guns went‹at
least not publicly. A classified version of the GAO report will be
submitted to Congress next month, and the Pentagon's investigation has
been handed over to its criminal division and the FBI. But the Turks
know what happened to hundreds of those guns, and the congregation of a
little church in Trabzon knows only too well how one of them was used.
With John Barry in Washington, Owen Matthews and Sami Kohen in Istanbul,
Larry Kaplow in Baghdad and Gretel C. Kovach in Dallas
---
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20226447/site/newsweek/
--
John #1782
"We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be
white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."
- Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) Founder of the Jesuit Order.
.
|
|
| User: "Michael Gray" |
|
| Title: Re: About those missing guns... |
13 Aug 2007 08:06:51 AM |
|
|
On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 22:30:12 -0700, johac
<jhachmann@remove.sbcglobal.net> wrote:
What hath BushCo wrought?
---
How Extremists Are Getting U.S.-Bought Guns
How firearms intended for Iraqi security forces are winding up in the
hands of extremists across the region.
Is that where the WMDs are?
.
|
|
|
| User: "johac" |
|
| Title: Re: About those missing guns... |
13 Aug 2007 06:47:35 PM |
|
|
In article <jql0c3ph2ookmbbl9dka96asdnuajla49v@4ax.com>,
Michael Gray <mikegray@newsguy.com> wrote:
On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 22:30:12 -0700, johac
<jhachmann@remove.sbcglobal.net> wrote:
What hath BushCo wrought?
---
How Extremists Are Getting U.S.-Bought Guns
How firearms intended for Iraqi security forces are winding up in the
hands of extremists across the region.
Is that where the WMDs are?
Bush was right. There were WMDs in Iraq. After we brought them there.
--
John #1782
"We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be
white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."
- Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) Founder of the Jesuit Order.
.
|
|
|
|
|
| User: "duke" |
|
| Title: Re: About those missing guns... |
13 Aug 2007 04:51:49 PM |
|
|
On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 22:30:12 -0700, johac <jhachmann@remove.sbcglobal.net>
wrote:
What hath BushCo wrought?
How Extremists Are Getting U.S.-Bought Guns
How firearms intended for Iraqi security forces are winding up in the
hands of extremists across the region.
The democratic party is making it easy for the Iraqi to give them away.
duke, American-American
*****
"The Mass is the most perfect form of Prayer."
Pope Paul VI
*****
.
|
|
|
| User: "magilla" |
|
| Title: Re: About those missing guns... |
13 Aug 2007 05:36:46 PM |
|
|
On Aug 13, 5:51 pm, duke <duckgumb...@cox.net> wrote:
On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 22:30:12 -0700, johac <jhachm...@remove.sbcglobal.net>
wrote:
What hath BushCo wrought?
How Extremists Are Getting U.S.-Bought Guns
How firearms intended for Iraqi security forces are winding up in the
hands of extremists across the region.
The democratic party is making it easy for the Iraqi to give them away.
Massive stupidity?
Check
Willful dishonesty?
Check
Impaired time sense?
Check
Petraeus took charge of weapons shipments in June 2004, months before
the Democrats took control of Congress. You and your band of thugs
don't mind any sort of crime, as long as it isn't publicized. Then
you treat the people talking about as worse than the traitors who
committed the crimes in the first place.
In other words, you're a traitor too.
Chris
.
|
|
|
|
|
| User: "Geoff" |
|
| Title: Re: About those missing guns... |
13 Aug 2007 09:43:49 AM |
|
|
johac wrote:
What hath BushCo wrought?
---
How Extremists Are Getting U.S.-Bought Guns
How firearms intended for Iraqi security forces are winding up in the
hands of extremists across the region.
I didn't know the US military used Glocks. Whatever happened to America
first?
.
|
|
|
| User: "johac" |
|
| Title: Re: About those missing guns... |
13 Aug 2007 06:45:58 PM |
|
|
In article <luCdnWuVHeK4813bnZ2dnUVZ_qqgnZ2d@giganews.com>,
"Geoff" <gebobs@yahoo.nospam.com> wrote:
johac wrote:
What hath BushCo wrought?
---
How Extremists Are Getting U.S.-Bought Guns
How firearms intended for Iraqi security forces are winding up in the
hands of extremists across the region.
I didn't know the US military used Glocks. Whatever happened to America
first?
Somebody's making money on them. I'm surprised that we aren't buying
weapons from China like everything else.
--
John #1782
"We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be
white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."
- Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) Founder of the Jesuit Order.
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
