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US cannot account for 190,000 guns in Iraq: report
by KEARNEY | August 1, 2007 at 06:53 pm
254 views | 0 Recommendations | 1 comment
US cannot account for 190,000 guns in Iraq: report
AFP
Published: Wednesday August 1, 2007
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The US government cannot account for 190,000 weapons issued to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to an investigation carried out by the Government Accountability Office.
According to the July 31 report, the military "cannot fully account for about 110,000 AK-47 assault rifles, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armour and 115,000 helmets reported as issued to Iraqi forces."
The weapons disappeared from records between June 2004 and September 2005, as the military struggled to rebuild the disbanded Iraqi forces from scratch amid increasing attacks from Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.
Since 2004 the military "has not consistently collected supporting records confirming the dates the equipment was received, the quantities of equipment delivered, or the Iraqi units receiving the items," the report said.
"Since 2006 the command has placed greater emphasis on collecting the supporting documents. However, GAO's review of the January 2007 property books found continuing problems with missing and incomplete records."
US commanders often accuse foreign powers such as Iran of supplying arms to illegal militias fighting in Iraq, but the report shows they cannot fully account for the hundreds thousands of weapons they brought in themselves.
August 1, 2007 at 06:53 pm by KEARNEY, 254 views, 1 comment
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at 19:28 on August 1st, 2007
I was in Iraq from Jan to Jun 2005 as a medic and I will tell you that this is because of the troop rotation process. Everytime there is a change of command 4-6 months for Airforce 7 Months for Marines and 15 Months for Army the new group comes in and tries to rebuild Rome. Much of what the last group did is briefed in a short 3-5 day period and then the old rotation leaves and the new rotation takes over. Believe me 3-5 days is definately not enough time to transfer the large amount of knowledge. Each new command has a set of goals and ambitions for their performance reports so there is incentive to rewrite to book, and the ops-tempo is at such an incredible rate for the duration of the deployment that there is simply not time for the current unit to put together transition templates for incoming rotations. There is huge political pressure to get the incountry guys gone and the incoming forces in place as quickly as possible. It is not anything sinister or gross neglect as your report suggests, it is not another example of the Bush administration screwing the pooch, there is simply no con-op for material reconstitution at that ops tempo. I mean I am sure that there is some document written by someone somewhere that outlines it but in the real world it is not feasible unless you want guys doing 5 year tours.