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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Sunday, August 12, 2007

The Italians break up a huge Iraqi weapons smuggling shipment

I'm sure we'll get more on this as it goes forward.
Their discovery led anti-Mafia investigators down a monthslong trail of telephone and e-mail intercepts, into the midst of a huge black-market transaction, as Iraqi and Italian partners haggled over shipping more than 100,000 Russian-made automatic weapons into the bloodbath of Iraq.

As the secretive, $40 million deal neared completion, Italian authorities moved in, making arrests and breaking it up. But key questions remain unanswered.

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.....


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."


So, the Iraqi Interior Ministry is acting as purchaser on what must be assumed to be Shia militia weaponry that they didn't want registered and tracked by the US forces?

I'll bet the Sunnis will just rush back into that government.

posted by mikevotes at 11:39 AM

7 Comments:

  • Good news. This shows the Iraqi government standing up and going it alone. It means we can start the withdrawal.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:10 PM  

  • Have you noticed that of all the instances where real terrorist plans are broken up, it is never the US that is doing it. It's usually "Old Europe."

    The only thing the US government seems to be able to do is to instigate a terrorist plot and then entrap people, or break up an impotent wing-nut group of wannabes. Have we ever brought anyone before the bar of justice in the War on Terror®? (I believe there were one or two individual cases, perhaps.)

    By Blogger -epm, at 12:47 PM  

  • Anon, the Iraqi government has been capable of its Shia sectarian fight from the day the Baathists lost power.

    EPM, Yeah, I have noticed that. There is the possibility that the US keeps some of their stuff quiet. (I know they might want to crow, but it's also politically destructive if the US population were to find out about near misses.)

    And, to my knowledge, there have been no terror cases brought against confirmed mainline Al Qaeda related terrorists. There have been a number of cases against environmental/animal groups, a number of cases against wannabes like the Miami group.

    The only one that's even close is Padilla, and claiming he was some sort of imminent threat is ridiculous.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 2:28 PM  

  • I'm not thinking Bush would keep news of successful terror disruption quiet, so as not to raise fears of Americans. To the contrary, they crow about wannabe and entrapment cases and spin them near misses. ("Thank God for George Bush and his totalitarian presidential powers, or you'd all be dead.") These are people who have manipulated public fear... raising it to a (dark) art form. So I don't think they'd sit on "good" news for that reason. Of course, they've sat on success stories for political gain; timing their news releases to put the Dems in their place as cowering appeasers. But that's usually a delay of weeks, maybe a couple of months... We've been on the War on Terror® for nearly six years now.

    No. In fact where seeing the Bushies haven't a clue how to suss out terrorists and their plots. Everything that's come to light indicates their on fishing expeditions. "If we listen to enough phone calls and read enough email messages, we'll eventually find those dirty terrorists." They use blunt instruments when what is needed is laser-like, intelligent focus.

    ---
    Oh, yeah. What about Zacarias Moussaoui? Was he a wannabe groupie, or the real deal?

    By Blogger -epm, at 7:43 PM  

  • *I wish there was an edit feature to comments. My grammatical typos are embarrassing!*

    By Blogger -epm, at 9:48 PM  

  • EPM, I know what your saying, but if there was a near miss with a nuke in New York, it would take a lot of spinning to keep it from causing a panic with all the attendant socio economic fallout.

    But I will certainly buy your argument. They have been clearly crowing about any little thing they can claim might be terrorism. So, yeah, you're probably right.

    And I would term Massaoui the real deal. thanks.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 10:03 PM  

  • It just shows that AK-47 is still superior to the American crap. :)

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4:09 PM  

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