General Petreus will apparently be a little late with his September recommendations for the Congress and President Bush. The General was responsible for giving out hundreds of thousands of weapons to the Iraqi military when he was stationed in Baghdad in 2004. The U.S. Accountability office recently acknowleded that 190,000 of these weapons have gone missing. Quite possibly, many guns are in the hands of insurgents who are using them to kill Americans. The General has requested another 50,000 troops to help find the missing weapons.
The search will not be easy. Soon after the American invasion in 2003 an Army sergeant, known only as Milo Minderbinder (after the character in Catch-22), skimmed at least 50% of incoming supplies (mainly Humvies, an array of weapons, body armor and the like) and sent them to neighboring countries. Milo would re-purchase the equipment, minus what had been stolen, and pocket the money. Anything that could not be accounted for was blamed on the insurgents.
Milo Minderbinder was not content just to steal from the American Army. He had deals with various tribes and insurgent groups who stole oil and gasoline that Milo would resell at higher prices in Jordan, Iran and Turkey. Minderbinder also paid Iraqis to sabotage new construction projects so unused building materials could be resold on the black market.
The sergeant didn't forget the American fighting men and woman. Every one leaving Iraqi is given an Iraqi army weapon pilfered for a huge government weapons' cache that Minderbinder had put under military guard. The families of the dead receive the weapon by FEDEX.
The military wants to court-martial him but the Pentagon has other plans. They thinik Milo Minderbinder is the perfect guy to sell at a huge bazaar the billions of dollars in military equipment that will be left behind when the Americans withdraw.
Minderbinder is already in serious discussions with the Chinese.
Posted by Chuck at August 13, 2007 12:56 PM | TrackBack