by CKR
Two big articles today:
Weapons Given to Iraq Are Missing by Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post.
Thirty per cent of the assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqis as part of building up their army and police forces have gone missing and are probably in the hands of the insurgents. And we're now paying money to our "allies against al-Qaeda" in Iraq. And we're planning to send yet more armaments to the region. Does anyone recall that we supplied arms to our "allies against the Soviets" in Afghanistan? Who turned out to be today's Salafist "extremists?"
Listen to what Margaret Beckett, then the UK's Foreign Secretary, had to say to the Carnegie Conference on Nonproliferation:
And since I have the non-proliferation elite gathered in one room, let me emphasise the importance this and future UK governments will place on the agreement of an international and legally binding arms trade treaty. Conflicts across the globe are made more likely and more intense by those who trade arms in an irresponsible and unregulated way. An arms trade treaty would contribute to a focus on arms reduction and build a safer world.Ah yes! She qualified that "in an irresponsible and unregulated way." Presumably the United States has been doing otherwise.
The Black Sites by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker. I haven't read this one yet. Now that the Soviet Union is gone, the United States has volunteered to take its place in arbitrary imprisonment and torture. Choose your enemies carefully, because you will become like them.