"It's Like Deja Vu All Over Again" (AKA "Is Viktor Bout Out Of Jail?") - 1/4 Million Weapons Unaccounted For In Afghanistan

Yogi Berra is my guru and Twitter is his messenger.

BBCNews: US 'lost track of Afghan weapons'

[Afghan soldiers with US-issue automatic rifles]

The US military has failed to keep track of thousands of weapons shipped to Afghanistan, leaving them vulnerable to being lost or stolen, a report says.

The report has been compiled by congressional auditors, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).

It found that, in the four years up to June 2008, the US military failed to keep complete records on some 222,000 weapons entering the country. [In Full]


Maybe it's the 'Bookkeeping' again... as General David Petraeus claimed when the same thing happened in Iraq...

Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, August 9, 2007

Bookkeeping problems are to blame for the inability to account for nearly 200,000 weapons issued to Iraqi security forces, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said late Tuesday.

In an interview on Fox News Radio, Gen. David H. Petraeus said he believes the weapons did reach the security forces, but that paperwork deficiencies don’t show their status.

“We believe those weapons all certainly were given to Iraqi units,” Petraeus said, according to a podcast recording on “The Alan Colmes Show.”

Meanwhile, 125,000 sets of body armor and 115,000 helmets intended for Iraqi forces could not be accounted for either, according to a Government Accountability Office report issued July 31.

The report faulted the Pentagon and the U.S. military command in Iraq for not applying the same standards in tracking supplies and weapons that it does elsewhere. The system has since been improved, the report found.

...or could it be.... Blackwater?

A former Blackwater employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the investigation includes a look at whether Blackwater shipped weapons from its Moyock headquarters to Iraq hidden in pallets wrapped tightly in shrink wrap.
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“In December, the prosecutors obtained guilty pleas from two former Blackwater employees, Kenneth Wayne Cashwell of Virginia Beach, Va., and William Ellsworth “Max” Grumiaux of Clemmons, N.C."

"The court files are stingy on details of the crimes…”

“…the federal (Nb. criminal) investigation of Blackwater is proceeding behind closed doors,”

A buffalo's take on the 'whos', 'whats', and, maybe most inportantly, 'whys' here