Good Thing Guns Don't Kill People

Because we're not so great at keeping them out of the wrong hands. It turns out that there are "discrepancies" in the records of what happened to the weapons and armor that we gave to the Iraqi security forces.

Out of 185,000 AK-47s given to Iraq, they've only managed to keep track of about 40% of them. 110,000 have gone missing. They've lost almost half of the pistols we sent, 80,000 out of 170,000. They've lost almost 2/3 of the body armor we sent: 135,000 sets are gone, only 80,000 are where they're supposed to be. More than 80% of the 140,000 helmets are missing. I know this administration is used to failing grades, but this is ridiculous.

Gee, I wonder where they could possibly have gone... The writer thinks that they may have gone to the insurgency, which is, I suppose, one possibility. It seems rather more likely that the Shia-dominated security forces are arming Shia paramilitaries, rather than the Sunni-dominated insurgency, but I'm sure that there's a pipeline to both sides of the civil war.

Now, because there are not already enough guns in Iraq, the Pentagon wants to give another $2 billion (with a b) worth of equipment to the same assholes that "lost" the equipment we gave them the first time. Do we have any reason to believe that they will do a better job this time around?