U.S. failed to track arms for Iraqi security forces

Talk about incompetence here. This is off The New York Times:

The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis, a federal report released Sunday has concluded.

The report was undertaken at the request of Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and who recently expressed an assessment far darker than the Bush administration’s on the situation in Iraq.

Mr. Warner sent his request in May to a federal oversight agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. He also asked the inspector general to examine whether Iraqi security forces were developing a logistics operation capable of sustaining the hundreds of thousands of troops and police officers the American military says it has trained.

The answers came Sunday from the inspector general’s office, which found major discrepancies in American military records on where thousands of 9-millimeter pistols and hundreds of assault rifles and other weapons have ended up. The American military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of nearly half a million weapons provided to Iraqis, the inspector general found, making it impossible to track or identify any that might be in the wrong hands.

Exactly where untracked weapons could end up — and whether some have been used against American soldiers — were not examined in the report, although black-market arms dealers thrive on the streets of Baghdad, and official Iraq Army and police uniforms can easily be purchased as well, presumably because government shipments are intercepted or otherwise corrupted.

This is sheer incompetence here. The U.S. military did not even bother setting up a tracking system for a half million weapons' serial numbers--did the military not consider the possibility that these weapons would end up on the black market? Now we've got the possibility that these weapons are currently in the hands on the insurgents--who are killing American soldiers with weapons purchased by the American taxpayer.

But it gets better. Continuing with the Times story:

Because the inspector general is charged only with looking at weaponry financed directly by the American taxpayer, the total of lost weapons could end up being higher. The Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon inspector general are expected to look at weapons financed by all sources, including the Iraqi government.

The inspector general’s office, led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., also a Republican, responded to Mr. Warner’s query about the Iraqi Army’s logistical capabilities with another report released at the same time, concluding that Iraqi security forces still depended heavily on the Americans for the operations that sustain a modern army: deliveries of fuel and ammunition, troop transport, health care and maintenance.

Mr. Bowen found that the American military was not able to say how many Iraqi logistics personnel it had trained — in this case because, the military told the inspector general, a computer network crash erased records. Those problems have occurred even though the United States has spent $133 million on the weapons program and $666 million on Iraqi logistics capabilities.

The report said that although the United States planned to scale back its support for logistics and maintenance for Iraqi security forces in 2007, it was unclear whether the Iraqi government had any intention of compensating by allocating sufficient money to the Ministries of Interior and Defense.

The inspector general only looked into the losses of weapons' shipments that were financed by the U.S. taxpayer--neither the inspector general, the Pentagon, nor the GAO even bothered looking into weapons shipments purchased by the Iraqi government. And because of this, the loss of weapons could be even higher. Second, we've got an Iraqi security force that is completely dependent upon the U.S. military's logistics program--in other words, the Iraqi logistics program is a complete joke. And the U.S. wants to reduce its support for logistics to the Iraqi security forces in 2007? It is no wonder that a half a million weapons disappeared. And the U.S. spent over a half billion dollars on the Iraqi logistics capabilities--what a waste of money.

So let's take a look at some of the weapons that were lost:

In its assessment of Iraqi weaponry, the inspector general concluded that of the 505,093 weapons that have been given to the Ministries of Interior and Defense over the last several years, serial numbers for only 12,128 were properly recorded. The weapons include rocket-propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles, machine guns, shotguns, semiautomatic pistols and sniper rifles.

Of those weapons, 370,000 were purchased with American taxpayer money under what is called the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, or I.R.R.F., and therefore fell within the inspector general’s mandate.

Despite the potential risks from losing track of those weapons — involving 19 different contracts and 142 delivery orders — the United States recorded serial numbers for no more than a few thousand, the inspector general said.

There are standard regulations for registering military weaponry in that way, governed by the Department of Defense small-arms serialization program. The inspector general’s report said that when asked why so many weapons went to Iraq with no record of serial numbers, American military officials in Baghdad replied that they did not believe the regulations applied to them.

American military officials said they did not believe that the regulations for registering military weaponry for Iraqi security forces did not apply to them? I just don't have a comment for this type of stupidity within the American military.

Continuing on:

There were also significant discrepancies in the numbers of weapons purchased and those in Iraqi warehouses. While 176,866 semiautomatic pistols were purchased with American money, just 163,386 showed up in warehouses — meaning that more than 13,000 were unaccounted for. All 751 of the M1-F assault rifles sent to Iraq were missing, and nearly 100 MP-5 machine guns.

Well, you could say that the insurgents have some good tastes in their weaponry. The MP-5 is probably one of the best submachine guns in the world--widely used by government security and police forces. It is a fairly lightweight, compact machine gun. While its 9 x 19 mm Luger cartridges may not have the stopping power to pierce the modern U.S. body armor, it can certainly be a great terror weapon for the quick hit-and-run tactics the insurgents have been adopting.

The M1-F is a Bulgarian assault rifle, that can be manufactured for either a 5.56 Nato round, or a 7.62 Kalashnikov round (used in the AK-47). I don't know which type of ammunition these M1-F rifles were chambered for, but I'm certain the insurgents can find plenty of 5.56 and 7.62 ammunition in Iraq.

What a mess.