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Accidentally Arming the Enemy Again - 200,000 AK-47's Lost...

category international | anti-war / imperialism | other press author Wednesday May 10, 2006 10:37author by redjade

'' A Nato spokesman said: "There's no tracking mechanism to ensure they don't fall into the wrong hands. There are concerns that some may have been siphoned off." ''
200,000 AK-47's
200,000 AK-47's

ok, so it's the Mirror - not well trusted, perhaps. Yet, amazing how plausible it is, considering how many implausible things have happened in the last 3 years....

Have 200,000 AK-47s Fallen Into The Hands Of Iraq Terrorists?
10 May 2006

Some 200,000 guns the US sent to Iraqi security forces may have been smuggled to terrorists, it was feared yesterday.

The 99-tonne cache of AK47s was to have been secretly flown out from a US base in Bosnia. But the four planeloads of arms have vanished.

Orders for the deal to go ahead were given by the US Department of Defense. But the work was contracted out via a complex web of private arms traders.

And the Moldovan airline used to transport the shipment was blasted by the UN in 2003 for smuggling arms to Liberia, human rights group Amnesty has discovered.

It follows a separate probe claiming that thousands of guns meant for Iraq's police and army instead went to al-Qaeda

Amnesty chief spokesman Mike Blakemore said: "It's unbelievable that no one can account for 200,000 assault rifles. If these weapons have gone missing it's a terrifying prospect." American defence chiefs hired a US firm to take the guns, from the 90s Bosnian war, to Iraq.

read the rest at...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=17055497&metho....html

AK-47
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47

Comments (19 of 19)

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author by redjadepublication date Wed May 10, 2006 10:48author address author phone

George Bush insists that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. So why, six years ago, did the CIA give the Iranians blueprints to build a bomb?
January 5, 2006

But this time, the ease and speed of the technology betrayed her. The CIA officer had made a disastrous mistake. She had sent information to one Iranian agent that exposed an entire spy network; the data could be used to identify virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran.

Mistake piled on mistake. As the CIA later learned, the Iranian who received the download was a double agent. The agent quickly turned the data over to Iranian security officials, and it enabled them to "roll up" the CIA's network throughout Iran. CIA sources say that several of the Iranian agents were arrested and jailed, while the fates of some of the others is still unknown.

This espionage disaster, of course, was not reported. It left the CIA virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence on one of the most critical issues facing the US - whether Tehran was about to go nuclear.

[....]

But it's worse than that. Deep in the bowels of the CIA, someone must be nervously, but very privately, wondering: "Whatever happened to those nuclear blueprints we gave to the Iranians?"

read the rest...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1678220,00....html

author by redjadepublication date Wed May 10, 2006 10:59author address author phone

Five years before Saddam Hussein’s now infamous 1988 gassing of the Kurds, a key meeting took place in Baghdad that would play a significant role in forging close ties between Saddam Hussein and Washington. It happened at a time when Saddam was first alleged to have used chemical weapons. The meeting in late December 1983 paved the way for an official restoration of relations between Iraq and the US, which had been severed since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

With the Iran-Iraq war escalating, President Ronald Reagan dispatched his Middle East envoy, a former secretary of defense, to Baghdad with a hand-written letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and a message that Washington was willing at any moment to resume diplomatic relations.

That envoy was Donald Rumsfeld.

read more at
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-01.htm

—————————

Also read:
Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein:
The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

a handshake is a handshake
a handshake is a handshake

author by Barrypublication date Wed May 10, 2006 11:06author address author phone

Much more efficient this contracting out business or so they say. And the grey market price for an oul AK or 9 will no doubt drop even further to something like a pair of jeans outta Tescos . So thats everybody happy .

This probably ranks up there with the millions of tonnes of Plastic explosive that simply disappeared off an Iraqi installation following Georges decision to blow up Iraq and steal its oil while striking a blow on the war on Terror

The upside of this is 200,000 is precisely the amount of AKs that Hugo Chavez was looking to buy to keep the thieves out of Venezuela . The irony of a recent Venezuelan bargain buy wont be lost on even a cretin like Bush but may be too much to hope for .

author by PaulR - .publication date Wed May 10, 2006 16:31author email tarbhmaith at amagine dot ieauthor address author phone

Good on you Redjade,& Barry

Too often I find find myself asking are they that stupid. The answer is every time YES.

We can not even say that it is the result of their imperialistic "ideals" as they have done the same in New Orleans (Weep, the music will never be adequately replaced). Fema, Cia and homeland security heads have all been implicated in either corruption or at least grand ignorance.

That is why it is so difficult to believe that a cohort of top Bushites/cheney etc organised or manipulated the 9/11 for their own ends

http://web.archive.org/web/20050303001407/http://www.wt....html

Did I miss something about Chavez needing 200,000 guns or was he the lucky recipient of Bush's largess

Related Link: http://web.archive.org/web/20050303001407/http://www.wtc7.net/videos.html
author by iosafpublication date Wed May 10, 2006 17:24author address author phone

It was one of those tiny little "filler" pieces in the "ADN" advertising rag. He was pictured with it in Havana. Interestingly enough he like a long list of luminaries doesn't seem happy with his invention's use. Apparantly he still insists "I designed the gun to protect the frontiers of my homeland" not to wage war globally .
"ADN" used up the rest of the space by reminding the commuter that Albert Einstein and Alfred Nobel also regretted the applications of their inventions / science. I found myself looking out the window of the metro at the darkened tunnel thinking oh yes, Albert Hoffman regretted LSD as well, hmmmmmmm, and other Helvetian, Paul Hermann Müller only had 3 years to consider the evidence of horrific side-effects of his DDT. He still died a Nobel prize winner. Kalashnikov just gots lots of Soviet ribbons. In London in 1997 I met a young African who worked to send money home to his family, his little brother's spine had been completely twisted from the kickback of firing a AK and when the war ended there was no pension for ex-child soldiers who can't work the fields now..... So his brother cleaned toilets in a London Arts centre .

That same year (or maybe it was after) Kalashnikov's invention was voted a "design classic" by a London based "clubber" magazine (ID) in the 90's, and has long ago passed the 20 million production stage. It really is by all accounts "a very good gun". You can crawl through wet african mud with it, or frozen tundra ice with it, & it will still fire all its clip in less than 7 seconds. There's one (with the firing hammer removed of course) in the display window of a souvenir shop down the road from my house. It nestles between swords, daggers, medievan knights, some flamenco dolls and has a polite little sign "not for sale - private collection"............ makes you think...............doesn't it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Kalashnikov

author by Barrypublication date Wed May 10, 2006 21:43author address author phone

The boul Hugo just got himself a serious hape of the oul AKs . Im not seriously suggesting theyre the same ones but it would be highly ironic if the US adventure in Bosnia led to some enterprising capitalist speculators indulging in some private enterprise with Russian arms dealers and a bargain buy to defend Venezuela and its sovereignty.

http://www.envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=2373

the boul Mikhail Kalashnikov basically nicked the design for his classic , mass produced virtually indestructible poor mans equalizer on the field off the defeated germans in WW2 . The easily mass produced stamped metal assault rifle firing an intermediate high velocity round was largely the brainchild of Mr Hugo schmeisser . Hitler hated it because ,,he was mad basically and prone to hating things for no good reason so it was kept secret until he finally found about it .

http://www.answers.com/topic/sturmgewehr-44

Luckily for the world the lunatic in charge of Nazi Germany remained utterly opposed to the weapon until its advantages became blindingly obvious to even a shit eating mass murderer like him. Germany wasnt able to mass produce enough of its Sturmgewehrs in time to avoid catastrophe on the eastern front . Had Hitler took a liking to the weapon a year earlier the history of the world would have been very very different . Little doubt about that . Stalingrad would have been taken .

Even when they did finally go into all out production allied bombing of the railways prevented the effective distribution of the weapon and its new style of intermediate ammunition which the Soviets basically plagiarised ( they merely changed the size of their 7.62 patrone round for the moisin nagant to a smaller intermediate version just as the nazis adapted their7.92 mauser round to an intermediate version for the new rifle. Minimum of engineering faffing about required). The Soviet advance on Berlin enabled them to grip the plans , machinery and design engineers before the yanks and so the most popular assault rifle in the world was born .

Anyway , whoever gets their hands on the missing 200,000 AKs will find that theyve got a better and much more sturdy , simple and more reliable weapon than the plastic futuristic crap the yanks and Brits are running abut with . Even a casual read of their soldiers blogs and their moans about Iraqi sand will reveal the same tale of woe as their whines about the Vietnam jungle decades earlier and the fact their rifles didnt work there either .

The difference between something invented out of pure necessity and capitalism inventing something to make a fast buck .

mikhails AK 47
mikhails AK 47

German STG 44 (like Marx a German concept taken and adapted by the russkies and exported to millions worldwide)
German STG 44 (like Marx a German concept taken and adapted by the russkies and exported to millions worldwide)

known to come in handy when the poor are up against serious odds
known to come in handy when the poor are up against serious odds

but sometimes the little man just improvises with whatever comes to hand
but sometimes the little man just improvises with whatever comes to hand

author by Barrypublication date Wed May 10, 2006 21:51author address author phone

Ok so it wasnt millions of tonnes like I slightly exaggerated earlier
but still quite a hell of a lot

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102904Y.shtml

author by redjadepublication date Wed May 10, 2006 22:29author address author phone

quote from article:
'But the four planeloads of arms have vanished.'

read that again....

'But the four planeloads of arms have vanished.'

most conspiracy theories can be tossed aside using two common theories.

a) wierd shit happens - and especially during wartime
b) simpler explanations are probably more accurate

that said, could someone explain to me how one loses four planeloads of arms?

I'm an understanding person - i mean, I guess its possible to lose a planeload of arms every once in a while, right? C'mon, haven't we all!?

But four?

author by Barrypublication date Wed May 10, 2006 22:37author address author phone

"" A Nato spokesman said: "There's no tracking mechanism to ensure they don't fall into the wrong hands.""

what this basically means is they havent written down the serial numbers . The guns are now the military equivalent of used notes , untraceable .

Gerry Adams and Denis Donaldson couldnt make this amount of
gear disappear without trace .

author by R. Isiblepublication date Wed May 10, 2006 22:42author address author phone

If you were facing certain military defeat in a foreign land and wanted to make sure they stayed fucked up what better way to do it than by ensuring plenty of munitions for a good civil war? An added bonus is that Iranians would have a hard time gaining control. Divide and conquer. Add weapons. Sit back and watch the shit.

ERROR: parabolic receiver unmounted. signal lost. EUMNTPAR -1

author by redjadepublication date Wed May 10, 2006 22:44author address author phone

"" A Nato spokesman said: "There's no tracking mechanism to ensure they don't fall into the wrong hands.""

NATO has no tracking mechanisms of its guns?

yeah, right.

Either, those guns were really lost, or they were diverted to assist some covert policy in place and this whole lost thing is just a cover story.

I'll bet a Pint they went to the MEK
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojahedin-e-Khalq

author by Righteous Pragmatistpublication date Thu May 11, 2006 11:42author address author phone

Observe Zaraqawi doing his Rambo thing with a M249 SAW light machine gun.

Related Link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4776071146790567260&q=musab+al-zaraqawi
author by redjadepublication date Thu May 11, 2006 13:22author address author phone

RP

don't you think it was quite a stroke of luck that the US found video outtakes from the official Zaraqawi video about a week after its debut?

The US can so easily find these outtakes but seemingly have no clue where Mr Zaraqawi is.

interesting, no?

author by Barrypublication date Thu May 11, 2006 20:11author address author phone

Iraq is already awash with arms , particularly AKs . Iraq had its own arms industry and produced millions of its own version of the AK , the bulk of which were distributed to the population at large prior to the invasion . Theyre all over Iraq in their 10s of 1000s along with tonnes of explosives , RPG and Katyusha rockets , millions of artillery shells , anti tank mines. Awash with the stuff . In fact theres little more anyone could do to destabilise the country for years to come short of nuclear intervention .( hold on...depleted uranium all over the place..done that too)

As regards the weapons in Bosnia being untraceable thats no surprise really . Its most likely they were Bosnian army surplus . Many of the pro nato statelets of the former warsaw pact countries are encouraged to buy their arms from Nato sources , in effect to westernise them . Much like Levis and rock and roll are a symbol of rejection of the old soviet alliance so is dispensng with its distinctive armaments , particularly its design classic inextricably identified with it . Bosnia , like Croatia and Poland before that has set down that path with its armed forces and begun adopting western arms. Much of its old arsenal is no longer needed , but still a sellable commodity .

If they were Bosnian army surplus they would almost definitely be untraceable . They got their arms firstly from whatever small amounts they could grab from Yugooslavian army stores . Unlike Serbia ( with its well established Zastava military manufacturers) and to a smaller degree Croatia, Bosnia didnt have any factories which made the AK . Therefore its army was armed with entirely smuggled and largely untraceable weapons from a variety of sources . Al Qaeda , the Saudis , Iran , the US they were all smuggling military aid into the province with a UN embargo in place. The Bosnian government itself was purchasing illegal arms shipments from a variety of black market sources , particularly Bulgaria . They were smuggled in in dribs and drabs in the backs of trucks from all over the place.The entire armaments of their forces would have come from a string of illegal sources and would most definitely have been largely untracable to begin with . The fact the arms cant be traced doesnt in itself point to a conspiracy .

But its the Moldovan connection to this that gets really interesting . It throws up a few possibilities . Moldova and the illegal arms trade are synonmymous , particuarly its break away region of Transdniestra . Moldova essentially has no national resources , save for the massive 40,000 tonnes arms dump simply abandoned there by the soviets when they pulled out their forces . Overnight the region became the biggest illegal arms bazaar on the planet . Even its police chief attempted to sell 1000s of 9mm pistols to the Provos (unsurprisingly as he was dealing with mates of Denis Donaldson MI5 were swiftly on the job and disrupted the sale) . The only commercial commodity in the place is vast amounts of illegal ams and even more tragically young women for sale to international sex trade .

With this airline being Moldovan registered we have the immediate presence of the trade in illegal arms and black market traffickers , basically a gangster outfit to begin with , being up to their necks in this . Its quite possible the Moldovans simply saw an opportunity to nick the stuff if it wasnt heavily guarded , which in a country like Bosnia wouldnt exactly be hard to do . Bosnia is extremely impoverished and thefts of other commodities on such a scale , such as washing machines , cigarettes etc have been carried out in storage yards throughout the world with ease .Plus they had the planes to get them out and a nearby country to go with them that wouldnt ask any questions . And a thriving black market in which the arms would dissolve themselves quite comfortably . It could well have been a case of opportunistic theft and private enterprise .

Or ,the Moldovans have been deeply implicated in the trade of illegal arms to Africa . And take a look at whats been happening in Mogadishu during the week and who was behind it . Where did this American backed militia which seeks to oust the islamic warlords suddenl;y spring up from armed to the teeth ? If the yankee spooks made the weapons disappear its most likely theres were they ended up . And the Moldovan airways link would make that scenario not altogether improbable .

author by Barrypublication date Thu May 11, 2006 20:18author address author phone

The Alliance for Restoration of Peace and Counter Terrorism ??

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/EEF99E39-02C9-4D...6.htm

and where did they gets their arms from ?

author by Green Inkpublication date Sat May 13, 2006 16:13author address author phone

The Moldovan airline responsible for carrying the guns is Aerocom, and is owned by Viktor Bout. This nice man has in the past been connected with running guns to Charles Taylor in Liberia, among other things. Further, he continues to have lucrative contracts from various government agencies in the US. Disappeared is another word we can assign to the scrapheap of meaning in the era of WWIII. For some light relief check out Stephen Colbert's roasting of Bush and his cronies.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879

Related Link: http://counterterror.typepad.com/the_counterterrorism_blog/2005/03/arms_merchant_v.html
author by redjadepublication date Tue May 23, 2006 00:35author address author phone

US Sets up £215m Deal for Afghan Arms - from Russia

by Thomas Harding

American defence officials have secretly requested a "prodigious quantity" of ammunition from Russia to supply the Afghan army in case a Democrat president takes over in Washington and pulls out US troops.

The Daily Telegraph can disclose that Pentagon chiefs have asked arms suppliers for a quote on a vast amount of ordnance, including more than 78 million rounds of AK47 ammunition, 100,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 12,000 tank shells - equivalent to about 15 times the British Army's annual requirements.

The Bush administration is said to want the deal because of worries that the next president could be a Democrat, possibly Hillary Clinton, who may abandon Afghanistan.

more at
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0522-02.htm

author by Ciaronpublication date Tue May 23, 2006 01:40author address author phone

A couple of weeks ago members of the New York Catholic Worker and students got into a Hilary Clinton lecture. They tried to get Hilary to state her position on the war. She refused to address the issue. At her next engagement that afternoon the media refered to the earlier meeting and questioned her on her position on the war she would still not say anything.

author by redjadepublication date Mon Aug 06, 2007 22:06author address author phone

from the Washington Post
'"They really have no idea where they are," said Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information who has studied small-arms trade and received Pentagon briefings on the issue. "It likely means that the United States is unintentionally providing weapons to bad actors."
One senior Pentagon official acknowledged that some of the weapons probably are being used against U.S. forces. He cited the Iraqi brigade created at Fallujah that quickly dissolved in September 2004 and turned its weapons against the Americans.
'

read more (with links) at
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/6/16614/21656


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