Ok, good info. They did say that at least some of them were shot with the same rifle, which was the part of the point of the article. One particular sniper, or weapon. But that still doesn't touch the Lake City Armory mention as source for the ammo. A couple of my previous posts were just pointless ramblings, which has only helped get things sidetracked.
One sniper. Using 5.56 NATO Lake City manufacture ammo. Like others have said here, they themselves have bought surplus 5.56 Lake City, so the ammo may or may not have come from directly from currently used U.S. forces, supply source.
Or it may have, since we've provided more than a few of our own M-16 variants, and ammo, to Iraqi forces. Some of it, once under the authority of the Iraqis, has walked off. Or so news articles I have read [a while back] have reported. I have no reason to believe that this is not possible.
This sniper might be toast already, if he'd been one of Mookie's boys.
I was doing some Linux work down at my local FFL's store last night. He has a very large pile of Lake City manufactured 69 gr .223 ammo for sale. It's really not that hard to find. The important issue is that 7 rounds fired from the same rifle point to a single individual that needs some "special" attention.