Overseen by the great Puke-tray-us!! Ol' GUN-RUNNER DAVE!!!
"Broken Supply Channel Sent Weapons for Iraq Astray" by ERIC SCHMITT and GINGER THOMPSON
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 — Co-workers say Kassim al-Saffar, a businessman and veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, also turned the armory into his own private arms bazaar with the seeming approval of some American officials and executives.
John Tisdale, a retired Air Force master sergeant who managed an adjacent warehouse:
“This was the craziest thing in the world. They were taking weapons away by the truckload.”
Activities at that armory and other warehouses help explain how the American military lost track of some 190,000 pistols and automatic rifles supplied by the United States to Iraq’s security forces in 2004 and 2005. In a country awash with weapons, it may be impossible to trace where some ended up.
Mr. Tisdale recalled seeing a briefcase stuffed with stacks of $20 bills under Mr. Saffar’s desk.
Already there is evidence that some American-supplied weapons fell into the hands of guerrillas responsible for attacks against Turkey because military suppliers to the war zone were not required to record serial numbers. It was unlikely that the authorities would ever be able to tell where the weapons went.
Many of those weapons were issued when Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the top American commander in Iraq, was responsible for training and equipping Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005.
In July, the company, American Logistics Services, which later became Lee Dynamics International, was suspended by the Army from doing future business with the government amid accusations that the company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to military contracting officers. The company had won $11 million in contracts to manage five warehouses with arms and other equipment in Iraq.
All that money you never needed, Amurka!
The company’s armory, a long concrete building divided into two sections in the back, was a logistics hub for the new Iraqi police. Crates of AK-47s and Glock pistols purchased by the Pentagon were trucked to the armory by armed convoys from a large warehouse at Abu Ghraib, and Mr. Saffar issued them to cadets.
It was also from this 1,800-square-foot building and six adjacent 40-foot-long metal shipping containers that Mr. Saffar plied his personal arms trade, co-workers said. He sold guns from the black market and from captured stocks.
Ted Nordgaarden, an Alaska state trooper who worked as the police academy’s supply chief:
“There wasn’t anybody there who didn’t know what he was doing.”
Mr. Tisdale said Mr. Saffar had a steady stream of customers, from Iraqis to South African private security contractors.
Mr. Tisdale:
“There were truckloads of stuff moving out of that armory without my authorization.”
Mr. Tisdale said that he complained repeatedly to two top American Logistics executives, but they assured him that Mr. Saffar’s dealings were proper. The company has not responded to requests for comment.
Mr. Tisdale and other co-workers said they believed that an American military official, Lt. Col. Levonda Joey Selph, an Army officer who oversaw the warehouse contract and whose activities have been part of the investigation into American Logistics, also must have known about the arms dealings. Mr. Tisdale said the colonel regularly visited the armory and met with Mr. Saffar. Mr. Nordgaarden recalled seeing Colonel Selph at the warehouse 8 to 10 times over a year.
She was connected to Puke-tray-us' office, even though they aren't telling you that!
"That officer, Lt. Col. Levonda Joey Selph, was at the heart of the effort to strengthen the fledgling Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005. She worked closely with Gen. David H. Petraeus, who commanded the effort at the time."
In an brief encounter outside her Northern Virginia home, Colonel Selph would say only that she was not guilty of any wrongdoing, and that she was under orders not to speak to the press. She would not say whose orders.
John Hess, who worked as the assistant director of operations for an American-owned company that helped manage supplies for Iraq and was the assistant director of operations for American Logistics, defended Colonel Selph as the one person trying to establish order in the chaos that characterized the early months of the reconstruction effort.
Mr. Hess said that though Mr. Saffar’s arms business might look bad from a distance, it hardly raised an eyebrow in Baghdad:
“You’re talking about a war zone. In Iraq, weapons are everywhere.”
And now we know why! U.S. was passing them out like candy!
And we don't even know where they went!
And yet this government wants to take away Second Amendment rights here!
Pffffffffffftttttttt!
