Like coal to Newcastle, bringing Kalashnikovs to Iraq

In a move sane people would consider bizarre, the U.S. is planning to import tens of thousands of AK-47s to Iraq. While U.S. soldiers are confiscating thousands of these weapons from Iraqis, the Coalition Provisional Authority under L. Paul Bremer have apparently decided to buy more for the country:

With a bidding deadline of yesterday, the Coalition Provisional Authority now running Iraq is quietly seeking the best deal on the arsenal from U.S.-licensed arms dealers, asking that they deliver the assault weapons to the Taji military base north of Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, by September 3. The plans were spelled out on its official website this week.

Why buy? Because the new Iraqi police force apparently requires “brand-new, never-fired, fixed-stock AK-47 assault rifles with certified manufacture dates not earlier than 1987.” This sounds so much like a way to line the pockets of yet more business associates, considering how it flies in the face of what is actually going on in Iraq:

Yet U.S. forces who seized control of Iraq in April have discovered vast stockpiles of never-fired AK-47s, which U.S. officials have said were being warehoused for a future Iraqi army.

At one compound of eight concrete warehouses that a company of the 10th Engineer Battalion found in central Baghdad in mid-April, Los Angeles Times reporters watched soldiers form a chain to fill a truck bed with AK-47s so new the soldiers' hands turned orange from the packing grease.

Hey, when it's not your money it doesn't matter what you spend it on. Right?

kherr @ 13:22 CDT | link | war