Could this be true? Or is this MSM misinfo ahead of the Sept. report to undermine our troops?
COLMES: “General Petraeus, “The Washington Post” reported on Monday of this week that the Pentagon lost track of about 190,000 AK-47s, assault rifles and pistols given to the Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005. The U.S. Accountability Office says U.S. military officials don’t know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons and I quote from the piece that says, “The GAO says weapons distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to follow established procedures, particularly from 2004 to 2005 when security training was led by General David H. Petraeus.” What happened?”
GENERAL PETRAEUS: “Well, what happened was we were in a period where, as you’ll recall, the Iraqi units of April 2004 had really crumbled when they were ordered into operations during the first Fallujah uprising and when we came in a started standing up the train and equip mission that came to be known as the Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq in the summer of 2004, there was not much in the way of structure.
We did start to receive equipment, both from - ordered by the CPA initially and also by the Iraqi government and it was a tough situation.
August was the time when Muqtada al Sadr took over the mosque in Najaf and again forces had to go into action. By that time we then had some Iraqi forces that were ready to fight but they didn’t have equipment and that was the beginning of a number of decisions to help provide equipment top Iraqi forces, sometimes literally under fire.
In one case actually flying into Najaf, into a helipad at night, a hot LZ, literally, in Chinook helicopters and actually kicking two battalions worth of equipment off the ramp and getting out of there while we still could.
That type of decision was something that we made at the time because those forces needed those weapons and that equipment. 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. Those units did have advisors, but they did not have the property book officer, they did not have the property book records that we would associate with normal procedures and yet they were units that needed to go into the fight, the Iraqi government was under enormous pressure. They made their request known to us and frankly it seemed to us that we needed to get the weapons into their hands and so that is what we did. And that’s what resulted was an inability to track by serial number some percentage of those weapons that were issued during that time.”
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IN OTHER WORDS: In the middle of a war, do you want us to take the time to sit down and write down all the serial numbers of each weapon and the name of each person who gets it, OR get the weapons in the hands of the Iraqi Units to fight the enemy. Your choice.
These people in the MSM really are against the USA. They never dig up the facts, just paint the USA as the bad and evil.
One last thing. When you read the actual report, the summary recommends that (1) the DOD determine what DOD accountability procedures apply or should apply and (2) and they determine which procedure is best, ensure sufficient staff to do the work.
Yep, it war. Bad crap happens. Same crap has happened in every war. Just another Know Nothing bit of hysteria from the Democrats and their tody’s in the Politicallly Corrupt media. Since they cannot win the debate over Iraq on the facts, they go for the gutter politics to try and slime any General who says what they do not want to hear