Never mind the rampant American corruption, they are going to feature this on a Sunday morning!
"An $833 million Iraqi arms deal secretly negotiated with Serbia has underscored Iraq's continuing problems equipping its armed forces, a process that has long been plagued by corruption and inefficiency.
The deal was struck in September without competitive bidding and it sidestepped anticorruption safeguards, including the approval of senior uniformed Iraqi Army officers and an Iraqi contract approval committee. Instead, it was negotiated by a delegation of 22 high-ranking Iraqi officials, without the knowledge of American commanders or many senior Iraqi leaders.
Dick Cheney, KBR and Halliburton, anyone?
And about those corruption safeguards:
"General Petraeus said that early in the conflict, he faced the choice of either quickly getting the weapons to willing Iraqi fighters who were defending the country or delaying while the tracking mechanisms were put in place. The general said he decided to get the weapons out fast, in one case landing in Najaf in Marine helicopters and dumping the weapons out the back hatch to waiting Iraqis."
Also see: Iraq War Costs Skyrocket, Yet Congress Unable to Scrutinize Spending
The deal drew enough criticism that Iraqi officials later limited the purchase to $236 million. And much of that equipment, American commanders said, turned out to be either shoddy or inappropriate for the military’s mission.
Yeah, never mind about that kid who sold the defective weaponry in Afghanistan for a cool $300 million contract!
An anatomy of the purchase highlights how the Iraqi Army’s administrative abilities — already hampered by sectarian rifts and corruption — are woefully underdeveloped, hindering it in procuring weapons and other essentials in a systematic way. It also shows how an American procurement process set up to help foreign countries navigate the complexity of buying weapons was too slow and unwieldy for wartime needs like Iraq’s, prompting the Iraqis to strike out on their own.
Such weaknesses mean that five years after the American invasion, the 170,000-strong Iraqi military remains under-equipped, spottily supplied and largely reliant on the United States for such basics as communications equipment, weapons and ammunition, raising fresh questions about the Iraqi military’s ability to stand on its own...."
Where, oh, where did all that fucking $$$ go?
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