Bout Face

By Cernig

I missed this one yesterday - international arms dealer Viktor Bout has been arrested in Thailand.

The U.S. is seeking the extradition of a suspected Russian arms dealer dubbed the "Merchant of Death," but for now he will remain in Thailand, where authorities are investigating if he used the country as a base to negotiate a weapons deal with terrorists, officials said Friday.

Viktor Bout, a 41-year-old whose dealings reportedly inspired a 2005 movie about the illicit arms trade, is accused of running weapons to al-Qaida, the Taliban and parties involved in bloody conflicts across Africa. He was arrested at a Bangkok hotel after a four-month sting operation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Thai and U.S. authorities said.

The long list of conflicts Bout has helped fuel and dictators he has armed has to be read to be believed. His customers include Afghanistan's Taliban, Anglola, Liberia, Congo, Columbia, Libya, Sierra Leone, Rawanda and of course al-Qaida. The US believes Bout's fleet of over 50 ex-Soviet military transports could transport tanks, helicopters and weapons "by the ton" to virtually any point in the world. No wonder they call him the 'Merchant of Death' and 'Man of War'.

Bout was arrested in Thailand as he was allegedly arranging a multi-milion dollar drop of sophisticated weaponry to Columbia's FARC.

Authorities in New York unsealed a criminal complaint Thursday charging that Bout conspired to sell millions of dollars in weapons - including 100 surface-to-air missiles and armor-piercing rockets - to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The U.S. considers the leftist rebels, who have been fighting Colombia's government for more than 40 years, a terror group. Bout and associate Andrew Smulian were charged with "conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization."

The DEA was involved because, according to the criminal complaint, the FARC uses weapons to protect its cocaine trafficking business, which helps to finance its operations.

It's a bit odd, and I'm not the only one to have noticed this, because back in 2004 Bout was a sub-contractor for the Pentagon, flying supplies into Iraq. Last September I noted an interview Laura Rosen did with author Douglas Faraj, who wrote the book on Bout.

The U.S. government response to revelations of the use of Viktor Bout to fly for government contractors in Iraq (not just a few flights, but hundreds, and perhaps a thousand) has been mixed. Bear in mind most of these flights occurred after President Bush had signed an executive order making it illegal to do business with Bout, because he represented a security threat to the United States. The State Department, under a congressional inquiry initiated by Senator Russell Feingold, found it had used Bout companies, acknowledged it, and stopped. Paul Wolfowitz, while at DOD, did not respond to queries for nine months, then acknowledged that DOD contractors had subcontracted to Bout companies. Despite the public revelation, the congressional inquiry, the executive order, and a subsequent Treasury Department order freezing the assets of Bout and his closest associates, the flights continued for many months, at least until the end of 2005. The Air Force cut him off immediately, but other branches of the military continued to use him.

If he was so wanted, why did the Bush administration deal with him, in direct contravention of their own order, rather than arresting him? I find myself wondering if the U.S. wants to extradite Bout to ensure he faces justice...or if the Bush administration simply wants more control over what evidence or testimony might come up in any trial. Cynical of me, I know.

Two Dead In Florida Restaurant Shooting

By Cernig

Yet another mass shooting, with two dead and five injured, this time at a Wendy's restaurant in Palm Beach, Florida.

A gunman burst into a Wendy's restaurant at lunchtime in Florida today, killing one person and injuring five others before killing himself, officials said.

...The mayhem unfolded just after noon during the lunch hour rush. Palm Beach County sheriff's spokesman Paul Miller said the shooter entered the restaurant and went to a restroom before coming out brandishing what appeared to be a 9 mm handgun.

The gunman went to the counter, Miller said, shooting a customer before slowly turning to his left and firing on others before shooting himself.

About 10 to 15 people were believed to be in the restaurant at the time of the shooting, Miller said.

Florida has some of the most relaxed gun laws in the country, and one in 45 people in Palm Beach has a concealed-carry permit. Wendy's doesn't serve alchohol and so I believe that under Florida's current laws it would be OK for diners there to have been carrying their own guns, although I may be mistaken.

One local Republican has been campaigning to relax the laws even further to allow guns at "restaurants that serve alcohol, youth athletic events that are not held at schools (think Little League games), airport parking lots, churches and any government building not considered "offices," including libraries and recreation centers." Cops however, want tighter laws.

I usually say I won't make political points after such indidents, out of respect for the victims - but it's getting to the point where by the time I've let a reasonable time go by there's been another of these incidents. Isn't it about time that America admitted that guns don't kill people - but they certainly help people kill people. Last year Scotland was branded the most violent nation in Europe and murders jumped by 20%, leading to outcry and outrage. Yet San Antonio had one more murder than the whole of Scotland during 2007, with a population a third the size. The difference is that it's simply easier, psychologically, to pull a trigger from feet away than to get up close and personal. Stop making it easier to get a hold of these easier killing tools.

Shootings At Northern Illinois U.

By Cernig

Yet another mass shooting is being reported, this one at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Ill.

Details remain sketchy, but at least two and as many as 20 people may have been injured by the gunman, and several people were taken away by ambulance. The gunman, who reportedly opened fire on students in a lecture hall, is believed to have been carrying a pistol and shotgun, and several reports suggest the gunman dead is.

Northern Illinois University police say the gunman is "no longer a threat" and "the immediate danger has passed," according to the Associated Press.

Kishwaukee Community Hospital's Web site reported that three to four victims with head wounds have arrived, and up to 15 total victims were arriving.

At 3:20 p.m. local time, the university posted an alert on its Web site warning students of a possible shooter.

"Get to a safe area and take precautions until given the all clear. Avoid the King Commons and all buildings in that vicinity," the Web site posting read.

Thirty minutes later the site confirmed the shooting and said "several people" had been taken away by ambulance.

Another tragic incident, following what appears to be a stream of mass-shootings at colleges, schools and malls. I'm as ever loathe to make political points on the day it has happened. I'm sure there will be plenty of comment on other blogs shortly.

Update Six dead, including the gunman. Our thoughts are with their families and with those injured.

Unfortunately, there are always those crass and juvenile folk who will rush to grind their own axes over others' misfortunes. Funny how they all vote Republican, though.

Another Fox To Guard A Henhouse

By Cernig

Yet again the Bush administration manages to put a fox in charge of guarding the henhouse. Neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz is to be chairman of the International Security Advisory Board, a key government advisory body on arms control and non-proliferation issues.

The move by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice marks a return to government for Wolfowitz, a conservative with close ties to the White House. As deputy defense secretary under President Bush, he was a major architect of the Iraq war.

Wolfowitz was replaced as World Bank chief last June after a stormy two-year tenure. His leadership was undermined by a furor over a hefty compensation package he arranged in 2005 for a bank employee who was also his girlfriend.

Wolfowitz will become chairman of the International Security Advisory Board, which reports to the secretary of state. The panel is charged with supplying independent advice on arms control, disarmament, nonproliferation and related subjects.

The portfolio includes commentary on several high-profile issues, including pending nuclear deals with India and North Korea and an offer to negotiate with Iran over its disputed nuclear program.

Wolfowitz currently is a defense and foreign policy studies expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank.

It beggars belief that anyone this side of Dr. Strangelove thinks this man, a charter member of the black-helicopter paranoid set who have so wrecked US foreign policy, in charge of such a body is a good idea.

Wolfowitz has a long track record of producing influential—and controversial—policy proposals on key aspects of U.S. defense policy: In the late 1970s, he participated on the Team B Strategic Objectives Panel, a notorious effort to reinterpret CIA intelligence on the Soviet threat that helped put the country on a confrontational path with the Soviet Union and set the stage for the Reagan arms buildup; as Dick Cheney's undersecretary of defense for policy in the Bush Sr. administration, he drafted (with I. Lewis Libby) a controversial "Defense Planning Guidance" report that is widely regarded as an early blueprint for the George W. Bush administration's preemptive defense posture and interventionist foreign policies; and he collaborated with the Project for the New American Century's advocacy campaign calling for war in Iraq. He has also been associated, along with Douglas Feith, with the work of the Office of Special Plans, the Pentagon outfit that George Tenet and others blamed for twisting the intelligence on Iraq.

His former employers at Northrop Grumman and the neocon lobby who had seemed to be losing its grip on the White House will certainly be celebrating, though.

Another Killer Lunatic With A Gun

By Cernig

Two are dead in Colorado after a pair of incidents only three days after Nebraska shootings horrified the nation. ABC reports:

A gunman killed two people at a training center dormitory for young Christian missionaries early Sunday after being told he couldn't spend the night, and hours later four people were shot outside a church in Colorado Springs.

It was not immediately known whether the shootings, about 65 miles apart, were related. No arrests had been made in either attack by afternoon.

The conditions of the four people shot Sunday afternoon in Colorado Springs, in the parking lot of the New Life Church, was not immediately known, El Paso County Sheriff's Lt. Lari Sevene said.

The first shooting happened at about 12:30 a.m. at the Youth With a Mission center in Arvada, a Denver suburb, police spokeswoman Susan Medina said.

A man and a woman were killed and two men were wounded, Medina said. All four were staff members with the center, said Paul Filidis, a Colorado Springs-based spokesman with Youth With a Mission.

The gunman came to the door of the Arvada dormitory seeking shelter, asking if he could spend the night, said Peter Warren, director of Youth With a Mission Denver.

When told he couldn't stay, the man walked inside, opened fire, then left on foot, Warren said.

Warren said he didn't know if any of the students or staff knew the gunman. "We don't know why" he came to the dormitory, Warren said.

Witnesses told police that the gunman was a 20-year-old white male, wearing a dark jacket and skull cap, who left on foot. He may have glasses or a beard.

So this nutter (or possibly two nutters) is still walking around. I've friends in Denver and I hope they're staying inside tonight.

As is our practise, no politics on this until tomorrow. For now, Newshoggers' sympathies and condolences to the families of the victims and our best wishes to those hurt are all that is required.

Omaha Musings

To the left is a picture of Richard Hawkins, the teen who walked into a mall in Omaha, Nebraska yesterday and shot dead nine people. He wrote in his suicide note that he wanted to be famous.

Bar a fleeting couple of days and a footnote in a couple of textbooks, he's unlikely to get his wish. The killing of nine people by a teenager with an assault rifle just isn't that remarkable in America anymore, it seems. Over at Memeorandum today, for instance, there's not a single blog post on the subject listed.

Have we become so immune to tragedy? Have we become complacent about the ease and frequency with which such events occur?

If Hawkins had been a convert to Islam, or an immigrant, rightwing bloggers would have found room for a post or several among their musings about Romney's electability and Bolton's paranoid fantasies. If Hawkins had been a regular poster at Free Republic or a prominent gun advocate, leftwing blogs would have found room between speculation about how long Bush knew about the latest NIE or how electable Hillary is.

Nine people are dead and it seems to me that no-one cares the day afterwards because there's no angle to serve their own agendas. Or perhaps because the very frequency of such events means they're all written out about their own agendas and can't be bothered revisiting the arguments again.

Let's revisit those arguments, not just this time but every time. Here's mine.

Two thirds of all murders in the U.S. are committed using a gun. I understand that gun advocates say not having guns for self-protection just makes matters worse - all the guns are then owned by criminals - and point to Britain's strict gun laws and own problems with gun crime as evidence. I understand that there's a big tradition of hunting with guns in the U.S. too. Britain doesn't have the wilderness or the game to have the same level of hunting so their isn't as large a pressure from that lobby. I see some possible merits in their arguments, intellectually, even though I'm emotionally opposed to gun ownership (I was in Dunblane on 13th March 1996).

But for the sake of innocents, can we at least agree that tighter controls on gun ownership and the security of guns in the home are needed? Hawkins apparently "borrowed" a fully automatic assault rifle from an adult. That just shouldn't be so easy to do. Actually, can we just agree that letting the ban on assault rifles lapse was a stupid thing to do? I don't really give a flying f**k if only the criminals will have assault rifles. Mostly, they shoot them at each other. Criminals don't walk into malls or classrooms and let fly at random.

Yet More Guns And Money

By Cernig

The New York Times over the weekend had another must read report on corrupt arms-dealing on the US taxpayer's dime in Iraq. Arms purchased by the U.S. for the Iraqi security forces were disappearing wholesale only to end up in places like Turkey (in the hands of PKK terrorists) or perhaps even in the hands of insurgents shooting at U.S. troops. And it seems plenty of people knew about it.

By all accounts, the businessman, Kassim al-Saffar, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, did well at distributing the Pentagon-supplied weapons from the Baghdad Police Academy armory he managed for a military contractor. But, co-workers say, he also turned the armory into his own private arms bazaar with the seeming approval of some American officials and executives, selling AK-47 assault rifles, Glock pistols and heavy machine guns to anyone with cash in hand — Iraqi militias, South African security guards and even American contractors.

“This was the craziest thing in the world,” said John Tisdale, a retired Air Force master sergeant who managed an adjacent warehouse. “They were taking weapons away by the truckload.”

Activities at that armory and other warehouses help explain how the American military lost track of some 190,000 pistols and automatic rifles supplied by the United States to Iraq’s security forces in 2004 and 2005, as auditors discovered in the past year.

...Ted Nordgaarden, an Alaska state trooper who worked as the police academy’s supply chief, said most of the weapons he saw leaving the armory went with a military escort. For his part, Mr. Saffar denies any wrongdoing, including any arms dealings. Nearly a half-dozen American and Iraqi workers say his gun business was an open secret at the armory.

...“There were times we would issue a batch of weapons and within 10 days they would show up at the Enemy Weapons Purchase Program,” Major Cox, who is on his second tour in Baghdad, wrote by e-mail, referring to a military effort to buy guns from the streets.

“We didn’t always think we were going about things the right way,” said Major Isgrigg, who left Iraq in July. But he said he believed that his actions were necessary, saying of his commanders: “They rushed it. Their goal was to get those units standing as fast as possible, and then to get out of there. There was no planning for the long term.”

...Mr. Tisdale said Mr. Saffar had a steady stream of customers, from Iraqis to South African private security contractors. “There were truckloads of stuff moving out of that armory without my authorization,” Mr. Tisdale said.

Mr. Tisdale said that he complained repeatedly to two top American Logistics executives, but they assured him that Mr. Saffar’s dealings were proper. The company has not responded to requests for comment.

Mr. Tisdale and other co-workers said they believed that an American military official, Lt. Col. Levonda Joey Selph, an Army officer who oversaw the warehouse contract and whose activities have been part of the investigation into American Logistics, also must have known about the arms dealings. Mr. Tisdale said the colonel regularly visited the armory and met with Mr. Saffar. Mr. Nordgaarden recalled seeing Colonel Selph at the warehouse 8 to 10 times over a year.

In an brief encounter outside her Northern Virginia home, Colonel Selph would say only that she was not guilty of any wrongdoing, and that she was under orders not to speak to the press. She would not say whose orders.

Lt. Colonel Selph was a key aide to General Petraeus, who was in overall charge of arming the Iraqi security forces during 2004 and 2005. The lost weaponry weighs in at more than 475 tons and was worth somewhere between $50 and %180 million depending on whether you want cost price or the black-market price. Yet Petraeus' own explanation for all of the losses is that, on his orders, troops were kicking the stuff out of helicopters. He is on record as saying he believes every single gun reached Iraqi hands - but, of course, he said that before evidence began to surface that such wasn't the case at all.

It is possible that Petraeus was truly ignorant of all malfeasance before the GAO made him aware of it - in which case he must admit to a massive failure in his command responsibility as subordinates hoodwinked him. Or the other possibility is that his original statements were an attempt at a cover-up. After all, just how likely is it that all these staff sergeants and majors didn't take their concerns up the chain of command? How likely is it that a Lt. Colonel was able to stop all such concerns coming to her general's notice? After all, we're talking about a network of corruption and graft which includes the highest levels of the Iraqi government, the Mafia, crooked majors, colonels and a Lt. Colonel or two (at least), as well as the world's most notorious black-market arms dealer.

The big elephant in the room on this story is "how high does it go?" I doubt very much that the active and reserve Lt. Colonels so far implicated in this affair are the top of the tree.

Former Aide To Petreaus, Others, Investigated For Iraq Weapons Corruption

By Cernig

The NY Times reports that "Several federal agencies are investigating a widening network of criminal cases involving the purchase and delivery of billions of dollars of weapons, supplies and other matériel to Iraqi and American forces, according to American officials." It's being described as the largest circle of corruption to emerge from the Iraq war to date - and one of Petreaus' former top aides is implicated.

The inquiry has already led to several indictments of Americans, with more expected, the officials said. One of the investigations involves a senior American officer who worked closely with Gen. David H. Petraeus in setting up the logistics operation to supply the Iraqi forces when General Petraeus was in charge of training and equipping those forces in 2004 and 2005, American officials said Monday.

There is no indication that investigators have uncovered any wrongdoing by General Petraeus, the commander of United States forces in Iraq, who through a spokesman declined comment on any legal proceedings.

This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen federal investigators, Congressional, law enforcement and military officials, and specialists in contracting and logistics, in Iraq and Washington, who have direct knowledge of the inquiries. Many spoke on condition of anonymity because there are continuing criminal investigations.

The inquiries are being pursued by the Army Criminal Investigation Command, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, among other agencies.

Over the past year and more there have been several inquiries and reports into what happened to all the missing US-supplied weapons in Iraq, but all have stopped short of saying arms ended up in the hands of insurgents or that US military personnel profited from corrupt redirection of the weaponry.

General Petreaus himself has been at pains to play down any such possibilities, instead concentrating on spurious fables about hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment weighing hundreds of tons being "kicked out of helicopters" in the rush to arm the Iraqi security forces. I have said a few times recently that my nose was twitching, the old bulls**t allergy was acting up again, and there was as yet uncovered criminality involving senior military officers going on. Seems I was right.

now, American officials said, part of the criminal investigation is focused on Lt. Col. Levonda Joey Selph, who reported directly to General Petraeus and worked closely with him in setting up the logistics operation for what were then the fledgling Iraqi security forces.

That operation moved everything from AK-47s, armored vehicles and plastic explosives to boots and Army uniforms, according to officials who were involved in it. Her former colleagues recall Colonel Selph as a courageous officer who was willing to take substantial personal risks to carry out her mission and was unfailingly loyal to General Petraeus and his directives to move quickly in setting up the logistics operation.

“She was kind of like the Pony Express of the Iraqi security forces,” said Victoria Wayne, who was then deputy director of logistics for the overall Iraqi reconstruction program.

Still, Colonel Selph also ran into serious problems with a company she oversaw that failed to live up to a contract it had signed to carry out part of that logistics mission.

It is not clear exactly what Colonel Selph is being investigated for. Colonel Selph, reached by telephone twice on Monday, said she would speak to reporters later but did not answer further messages left for her.

The enormous expenditures of American and Iraqi money on the Iraq reconstruction program, at least $40 billion over all, have been criticized for reasons that go well beyond the corruption cases that have been uncovered so far. Weak oversight, poor planning and seemingly endless security problems have contributed to many of the program’s failures.

The investigation into contracts for matériel to Iraqi soldiers and police officers is part of an even larger series of criminal cases. As of Aug. 23, there were a total of 73 criminal investigations related to contract fraud and abuse in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, Col. Dan Baggio, an Army spokesman said Monday. Twenty civilians and military personnel have been charged in federal court as a result of the inquiries, he said. The inquiries involve contracts valued at more than $5 billion, and Colonel Baggio said the charges so far involve more than $15 million in bribes...The investigations involve contractors, government employees, local nationals and American military personnel.

What's more, since Senators were briefed on this back at the start of the month, it's unlikely in the extreme that Petreaus was unaware of it while he was making his excuses.

Questions about whether the American military could account for the weaponry and other equipment purchased to outfit the Iraqi security forces were raised as early as May of last year, when Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and then the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a request to an independent federal oversight agency to investigate the matter.

But federal officials say the inquiry has moved far beyond the initial investigation of hundreds of thousands of improperly tracked assault rifles and semiautomatic pistols that grew out of Senator Warner’s query. In fact, Senator Warner said in a statement to The New York Times that he was outraged when he was briefed recently on the initial findings of the investigations.

“When I was briefed on the recent developments, I felt so strongly that I asked the Secretary of the Army to brief the Armed Services Committee right away, which he did in early August,” Senator Warner said in a statement.

The Army is despatching its IG, a three-star general, to Iraq with carte blanche to continue investigations. I wonder if they'll also investigate allegations of torture made by some who tried to whistleblow on the arms sale scams?

Amazing what got overlooked today because Fredo quit and another Republican got caught with his pants down, eh?

Blow A Whistle, Get Tortured

By Cernig

If ever there was a clear-cut case for Congressional investigation and oversight hearings, this is it.

One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.

Or worse.

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers — all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.

“It was a Wal-Mart for guns,” he says. “It was all illegal and everyone knew it.”

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn’t know whom to trust in Iraq.

For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.

Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics “reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.”

I've written a couple of posts now on the subject of disappearing weapons in Iraq, noting that the sums involved for those who have redirected such weapons run into the hundreds of millions. It isn't a small amount and this isn't about a few bad apples. No-one has even begun to properly follow up the many and varied cases of corruption, theft and illegal activity which has meant the U.S. taxpayer has primed the pump of the most active and lucrative black market in guns in the world and has directly led to the deaths of US soldiers at the business ends of their own nation's weaponry. But if someone did, I firmly believe that they would discover that complicity and corruption reaches into the highest ranks of the military in Iraq as well as into senior levels at arms firms and security contracting corporations.

The Lucrative And Deadly Business of Missing US Arms

By Cernig

Via Firedoglake, here's an MSNBC report on just what the fallout from all those missing American guns in Iraq is. Many are making their way to Turkey, for instance.

Glocks are high-quality sidearms, but by last year they had practically become common street weapons in Turkey. More than 1,000 had been taken from criminals, guerrillas, terrorists and assassins all over the country, and authorities believed tens of thousands more had found their way onto the black market—but from where? The Austrian government repeatedly checked the serial numbers of the murder weapons. The manufacturer informed Ankara that the pistols were consigned originally to " 'US Mission Iraq' [formerly the Coalition Provisional Authority], address: Republican Presidential Compound, Ministry of the Interior, Baghdad, Iraq."

There are many more where those came from. At least three U.S. government agencies are now investigating the massive "disappearance" and diversion of weapons Washington intended for Iraqi government forces that instead have spread to militants and organized gangs across the region. The potential size of the traffic is stunning. A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office last month showed that since 2004, some 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols, bought with U.S. money for Iraqi security forces, have gone missing.

At retail prices in the United States, a Glock 19 costs about $500. On the black market in Turkey, it can fetch up to $3,500, according to the national police. A senior Turkish security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities, said his government estimates some 20,000 U.S.-bought Glock 9mm pistols have been brought from Iraq into his country over the last three years. "The problem on our side is that this corruption is so big they [the Iraqi and U.S. governments] cannot stop it," said the official.

The MSNBC article also mentions the black market value of all those Glocks.

But the first detailed investigation of the missing weapons was conducted last summer by Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. His team found there was a special problem with Glocks: 13,180 were missing, worth as much as $46 million on the black market. The more recent GAO study puts the total figure for missing pistols closer to 80,000.

Which would make them worth around 280 million on the black market. Add in the missing AK-47s which have a wholeslae value of another $50 million but a black market value perhaps as high as $200 million and suddenly you're talking about a lot of money. Enough to kill over? Maybe.

One of Petraeus's subordinates, Col. Theodore Westhusing, had taken leave from his position as a professor of ethics at West Point to serve a six-month tour as commander of the unit training counterterrorism and Special Operations Forces. By the spring of 2005, Westhusing had grown increasingly concerned about the corruption he thought he saw in the program. He was especially upset after receiving an anonymous letter on May 19, 2005, which claimed there was outright fraud by government contractors. Among the alleged problems: failure to account for almost 200 guns.

Westhusing passed the letter up the chain of command. A few days later he wrote a formal memo saying he thought the charges were off-base. But at the same time his conversations and e-mails with his family members became cryptic and he seemed concerned for his safety. Colleagues said he looked exhausted and preoccupied. On June 5, 2005, Westhusing was found dead in his temporary quarters at Camp Dublin near Baghdad airport, apparently having shot himself with his own pistol. "I cannot support a [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuses and liars," he wrote in a note found near his body. "Death before being dishonored any more. Trust is essential—I don't know who to trust anymore."

Military investigators concluded that Westhusing's death was a suicide and that the various complaints he leveled against commanders and contractors were "unfounded." Westhusing had had trouble fitting in with other officers, became increasingly withdrawn and seemed depressed when he thought his tour might be extended. But his older brother doesn't believe he killed himself, especially not, as it happened, on his mother's birthday. "Everything he talked about and reported up his chain of command is coming out now: contract fraud, stolen guns and equipment, issues with killings," says Tim Westhusing, who works for IBM in Oklahoma.

General Petraeus declined to comment for the record on the death of Westhusing or the diversion of arms.

The Pentagon's internal investigation into corruption among contractors in Iraq has now been handed to its criminal division and the FBI. This is a scandal which has not yet had its full impact.

Iraq's Arms Deal With The Mafia

By Cernig

Regular readers may remeber we noted this story when it first broke, but the Italian investigation of a massive Mafia arms deal with Iraq is uncovering a far larger can of worms than originally thought.

For one thing, The Associated Press has learned that Iraqi government officials were involved in the deal, apparently without the knowledge of the U.S. Baghdad command - a departure from the usual pattern of U.S.-overseen arms purchases.

Why these officials resorted to ``black'' channels and where the weapons were headed is unclear.

...Iraqi middlemen in the Italian deal, in intercepted e-mails, claimed the arrangement had official American approval. A U.S. spokesman in Baghdad denied that.

``Iraqi officials did not make MNSTC-I aware that they were making purchases,'' Lt. Col. Daniel Williams of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I), which oversees arming and training of the Iraqi police and army, told the AP.

Operation Parabellum, the investigation led by Dario Razzi, anti-Mafia prosecutor in this central Italian city, began in 2005 as a routine investigation into drug trafficking by organized-crime figures, branched out into an inquiry into arms dealing with Libya, and then widened to Iraq.

...Four Italians have been arrested and are awaiting court indictment for allegedly creating a criminal association and alleged arms trafficking - trading in weapons without a government license. A fifth Italian is being sought in Africa. In addition, 13 other Italians were arrested on drug charges.

In the documents, Razzi describes it as ``strange'' that the U.S.-supported Iraqi government would seek such weapons via the black market.

Investigators say the prospect of an Iraq deal was raised last November, when an Iraqi-owned trading firm e-mailed Massimo Bettinotti, 39, owner of the Malta-based MIR Ltd., about whether MIR could supply 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles and 10,000 machine guns ``to the Iraqi Interior Ministry,'' adding that ``this deal is approved by America and Iraq.''

The go-between - the Al-Handal General Trading Co. in Dubai - apparently had communicated with Bettinotti earlier about buying night visors and had been told MIR could also procure weapons.

Al-Handal has figured in questionable dealings before, having been identified by U.S. investigators three years ago as a ``front company'' in Iraq's Oil-for-Food scandal.

The Interior Ministry's need at that point for such a massive weapons shipment is unclear. The U.S. training command had already reported it would arm all Interior Ministry police by the end of 2006 through its own three-year-old program, which as of July 26 has bought 701,000 weapons for the Iraqi army and police with $237 million in U.S. government funds.

Negotiations on the deal progressed quickly in e-mail exchanges between the Italians and Iraqi middlemen of the al-Handal company and its parent al-Thuraya Group. But at times the discussion turned murky and nervous.

The Iraqis alternately indicated the Interior Ministry or ``security ministries'' would be the end users. At one point, a worried Bettinotti e-mailed, ``We prefer to speak about this deal face to face and not by e-mail.''

...By December, the Italians, having found a Bulgarian broker, were offering Russian-made goods: 50,000 AKM rifles, an improved version of the AK-47; 50,000 AKMS rifles, the same gun with folding stock; and 5,000 PKM machine guns.

The Iraqis quibbled over the asking price, $39.7 million, but seemed satisfied. The Italians were set for a $6.6 million profit, the court documents show, and were already discussing air transport for the weapons. At this point prosecutor Razzi acted, seeking an arrest warrant from a Perugia court.

...Reached at his office in Amman, Jordan, Waleed Noori al-Handal denied the family firm had done anything wrong in the Italian arms case.

``We don't have anything to hide,'' he told the AP.

Citing the names of ``friends'' in top U.S. military ranks in Iraq, al-Handal said his company has fulfilled scores of supply and service contracts for the U.S. occupation. Asked why he claimed U.S. approval for the abortive Italian weapons purchase, he said he had a document from the U.S. Army ``that says, 'We allow al-Thuraya Group to do all kinds of business.'''

In Baghdad, the Interior Ministry wouldn't discuss the AK-47 transaction on the record. But a senior ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity, acknowledged it had sought the weapons through al-Handal.

Asked about the irregular channels used, he said the ministry ``doesn't ask the supplier how these weapons are obtained.''

Although this official refused to discuss details, he said ``most'' of the 105,000 weapons were meant for police in Iraq's western province of Anbar. That statement raised questions, however, since Pentagon reports list only 161,000 trained police across all 18 of Iraq's provinces, and say the ministry has been issued 169,280 AK-47s, 167,789 pistols and 16,398 machine guns for them and 28,000 border police.

A companion piece to this report, which looks at the extent of the Iraqi arms black market, says there are already over seven million guns in Iraqi "civilian" hands and that Anbar police are missing "large portions" of their issued equipment. It seems clear that black market purchases via Iraqi government officials are likewise destined, not for the Iraqi security forces, but for militais or to be sold on the black market for the enrichment of corrupt officials.

The US military has also used a network of private firms - some of highly dubious provenance - to transfer over 200,000 guns to Iraq from Bosnia, many of which then promptly disappeared. It seems likely that at least some of that activity has seen the same kind of corruption alleged in the case of Maj. James Cockerham, recently arrested for the largest Army contract-rigging and bribery case to emerge from the Iraq reconstruction effort.

It's interesting to note that all of this happened in 2004-2005, when General Saint Petraeus was the man charged with being US overseer of the Iraqi defense procurement process as part of his task of training the Iraqi security forces.

From The Department Of Feeble Excuses

By Cernig

As excuses go this one's pretty feeble, up there with "the dog ate my homework".

General Saint Petraeus* appeared on yet another rightwing propoganda vehicle, Fox News Radio's "Alan Colmes Show," to claim that tens of thousands of US-provided weapons went missing in Iraq because of clerical errors in Iraqi units.

"That type of decision was something that we made at the time because those forces needed those weapons and that equipment," Petraeus told Colmes. "We weren't going to stay there in the dark and make guys do a serial-number inventory and sign them up, and that is what happened. We believe those weapons all certainly were given to Iraqi units."

"Pet General" also believes in the tooth-fairy and Father Christmas.

The excuse wouldn't be quite so feeble if the GAO didn't clearly say the problem was more widespread than simply being "overlooked in the heat of battle".

Iraqi security forces were virtually nonexistent in early 2004, and in June of that year Petraeus was brought in to build them up. No central record of distributed equipment was kept for a year and a half, until December 2005, and even now the records are on a spreadsheet that requires three computer screens lined up side by side to view a single row, Christoff said.

The GAO found that the military was consistently unable to collect supporting documents to "confirm when the equipment was received, the quantities of equipment delivered, and the Iraqi units receiving the equipment." The agency also said there were "numerous mistakes due to incorrect manual entries" in the records that were maintained.

I'd like to see the military put a total cost figure on this clerical error, wouldn't you? A rough calculation is that 110,000 AK-47's, at the usual nation-to-nation arms deal price of @$380 each, works out to a $42 million clerical error - plus the price of the tens of thousands of pistols and all that body armor, none of which is cheap. I'm betting that someone, somewhere, pocketed more than a little of that money.

* As a matter of formal ettiquette, should he be addressed as "Saint General Petraeus" or as "General Saint Petraeus"? Anyone got a copy of Miss Manners handy?

Talking Points

by Cernig

Via the excellent Sideshow, Bartcop has the quote of the day:

"If more guns is the answer, why do people go thru a metal detector at GOP conventions?",,

Here endeth the Instapundit impression. I could do 20 lazy-blogging posts a day like this, easy. Heh, indeed.

The Gun Lobby Protects Illegal Gun Dealers

By Cernig

Head on over to The Agonist, where there's an article by New York State Senator Eric Schneiderman which charges that Republican-backed legislation is undermining civil and criminal justice efforts against illegal guns.

Here's a snippet:

In the wake of this week’s tragic shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, we are witnessing a lot of hand-wringing by politicians who acknowledge that the flooding of America with easily available handguns is a problem, but contend that the overwhelming power of the gun lobby prevents us from doing anything about it. In fact, there’s a great deal we can do. For one thing, we can unshackle our law enforcement officers and lawyers by allowing them to use data on "crime guns” to stop the small minority of gun dealers that supply America’s criminals with their weapons.

...At the behest of the gun lobby, Congress attached riders to the last three appropriation bills for the ATF—the Tiarht Amendments —barring the ATF from sharing crime gun trace data with municipalities or local law enforcement, except for data relating to a specific crime. Yes, our “tough on crime” Republican Congress decided it would be a good idea to make it impossible for local police departments and city governments to analyze where the criminals in their communities are getting illegal guns. This provision makes it impossible for cities that bear the brunt of the illegal gun problem to either target their law enforcement resources effectively against illegal guns within their jurisdiction, or to identify the gun dealers outside their jurisdiction who are supplying illegal guns to their communities and seek to have their reckless behavior enjoined by the courts.

Schneiderman says that past analysis by the ATF has shown that approximately 1 percent of guns dealers sell approximately 57 percent of the guns that are used in crimes - for an individual shop that is supplying the illegal market that means having hundreds of “crime guns” traced back to them per year as oppossed to one or two for a law-abiding one - but that the gun manufacturers are intent on keeping the profits they make from these illegal sales which amount to 15% of all gun sales.

Meanwhile, everyone else pays the cost. Gun violence costs the US $100 billion a year, writes Schneiderman, primarily from healthcare and lost productivity costs. He urges that "to realize the promise of the civil justice system when it comes to reining in illegal guns, we must lobby Congress to strip the Tiahrt amendment from this year’s ATF appropriation...tell Congress to protect police instead of criminals."

Such actions should only be the beginning, in my opinion. US homicides involving guns are, per capita, 55 times higher than UK rates. The only way to end gun violence is to end easy access to guns - in particular handguns - and to end the culture that glorifies gun macho as being somehow as American as apple pie.

What's Needed - A Snowdrop Petition For America

By Cernig

Tim Nafziger, writing for Ekklesia, the online Christian magazine, has an idea. He has been thinking about the consequences of the massacre at VA Tech and has come to the conclusion that the US pro-gun lobby are unassailable right now because of a perception - deliberately fostered by the gun activists, the NRA and manufacturers - that lax gun laws are part of the "frontier values" which in turn are part of the narrative about what made America great.

Tim recalls that smoking cigarettes used to be seen as an integral part of those "frontier values" too - but how many political leaders would chance their political futures on backing the pro-smoking lobby nowadays? A campaign of lawsuits, advertising and exposures of the real costs of smoking changed public perceptions in the face of a powerfully-connected and well-funded lobby. It could happen again.

Tim points to the UK for a way.

But there is hope. In the United Kingdom after the Dunblane Massacre, more than 700,000 people signed the Snowdrop petition calling for a total ban on the private ownership and use of handguns in the United Kingdom. The petition led to the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997 which completely banned handguns in the UK (this was the final in a long series of hand gun control laws).

According to a report from the Home Office, from mid-2005 to mid-2006, only 49 people were killed by handguns (Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2005/2006, page 36). This is a rate of roughly 1 per million compared to 55 per million in the US (FBI 2004 Crime report). It turns out that a mandatory five-year jail term for carrying a hand gun does have an effect. Of course there have been some terrible shootings impacting the black community recently, tied in with gang and drug culture it seems. But the growth of such incidences is still lower and they can can be handled in the context of a wider culture against guns.

I lived in the UK from 2004 through 2006 and noticed that fatal shootings were so rare that they regularly made the national newspaper. People take the hand gun ban for granted and find the gun religion in our country to quaint and strange. On one of my first evenings in the UK I watched a documentary in which a UK reporter went deep into US gun country and interviewed gun disciples. It was like watching an exotic safari.

Wouldn't you like to live in a country where fatal shootings were so rare, so horrid, so noteworthy, that they make the national news?

Here's the thing - it really is possible.

I remember all too well the day of the Dunblane massacre, 13th March 1996, because I was visiting clients in the small Scottish town at the time. A lunatic with a grudge walked into a school with two Browning handguns and killed Sixteen children aged 5 and 6, along with their teacher. It was a turning point for the British people, who decided enough was enough.

A group of parents and friends of the bereaved began a petition to have all handguns banned. It was called the Snowdrop Campaign, after the only flower in bloom in Scotland in March. Within 6 weeks, it had collected 705,000 signatures - and a rival petition by the pro-gun lobby collected a tenth of that number in a longer period. The result was stunning. Gun control became a major campaign issue. Just 29 per cent of Conservative candidates favoured a total ban on handguns, compared with 97 per cent of would-be Labour MPs, and 86 per cent of Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives, in government for more than a decade, were resoundingly defeated at the general election and the new Labour government made legislation which banned private ownership of handguns a priority of its first months in office.

If guns are illegal, only criminals with the right kind of contacts will be able to get guns. You can't then just drive up to a gun show and buy a gun, no questions asked. That limits the field considerably. It excludes, for instance, high school and college kids. It excludes those who suddenly just flip-out or have a moment of blind rage in a domestic dispute. It excludes many dime-store robbers and other petty or opportunistic criminals. It makes things easier for police too, who don't have to approach every single situation as if it might be a shoot-out and can allocate resources to catching the criminals who do have the right kind of contacts to get guns, and their dealers. But it cannot be piecemeal, it must be a national ban done at a federal level.

If there's anyone out there with the gumption and the resources to organise a version of the Snowdrop Campaign in the US, they will have my backing.