I am aware that Joe already posted about this news, but I thought it might be of interest to offer a somewhat different perspective.
It is news like this that gives me a severe headache:
The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.
The author of the report from the Government Accountability Office says U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops. The highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons was 14,000, in a report issued last year by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
These weapons fall into the hands of terrorists of all stripes, but especially the PKK. The Turkish army is fighting against the PKK every day. During those fights, the Turkish army found American weapons in the hands of PKK terrorists. Turkey complained to America, now its complaints and anger are validated: the PKK is indeed using American weapons. Because of America’s uncarefulness, Turks are dying. Cernig comments:
It has been a long held belief of mine, supported by a good deal of evidence, that pretty much any nation state, criminal organization or shady businessman with access to spare small arms and platoon level infantry weaponry is selling weapons either directly or indirectly to the Iraqi black, gray and white markets. One of the larger foreign suppliers of arms to the Iraqi black market is the United States government. These actions were not intentional, just part of the cluster of amazing incompetence and unnaccountability of the Heritage Foundation jokers who were the ‘best and brightest’ the GOP could find willing to go to supply sider heaven.
It might be unintentional, but Turkish soldiers get killed by the PKK nonetheless. From Turkey’s perspective it does not matter much whether the arms are sold intentionally or unintentionally to the Kurdish workers organization. The result is the same: Turks die.
This is a major problem which has to be solved. It should also encourage the US to – finally – take the threat the PKK poses to the stability in the region seriously. Of course, I have been saying this for months but not much has changed since then. If the US does not act, it will not take long before Turkey acts. The MHP (a nationalist party) has won a lot of seats during Turkey’s elections in July. It will call for military action – and the Turkish people will support it (and the CHP) in this regard.
Of course, not only are these weapons used by the PKK, they are also used by other terrorist groups who kill Americans with them: American weapons kill Americans because the American army is not careful enough.
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