Pentagon Arming Insurgents

by Joel Thompson

Add another infuriating chapter to the Iraq War. A new report, released by the Government Accountability Office, details how the Department of Defense has lost track of almost 200,000 guns and 250,000 pieces of body armor and helmets provided to Iraqi security forces.

Among those numbers is 110,000 deadly AK-47 assault rifles that DOD officials are privately acknowledging ended up in the hands of insurgents and are being used against coalition forces.

The loss rate on these rifles, which were given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, is a staggering 59% (an article in the Cincinnati Post details all of the numbers).

The news only gets worse. The man in charge of arming and equipping the Iraqi security forces during that time period was none other than Gen. David Petraeus, who is now the top commander in Iraq. Petraeus consistently receives praise from the Bush administration for his fine work in Iraq, but they have failed to mention that he oversaw an operation that handed, by American standards, an unsophisticated army more weaponry than they ever could have hoped to get their bloody hands on.

Congress should immediately open an inquiry into this heinous DOD fumbling and bring the guilty parties to justice. And every time Bush and Cheney posture about Iran and Syria's involvement in arming insurgents, people everywhere should point out that the Pentagon should share a large portion of the blame.