Petraeus: Give Iraq More WeaponsSomething that’s passed without notice in the hearings today and yesterday is that Gen. Petraeus cheered Iraq “becoming one of the U.S.’s larger foreign military sales customers.” According to the general, Iraq has committed $1.6 billion already to the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales program, and might commit another $1.8 billion before the end of the year. A few minutes ago, he told Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) that “we have to push the [foreign military sales] system” to get more weapons into Iraqi hands.
This is a pattern with Petraeus. When he commanded the training and equipping of Iraqi forces, almost 200,000 pistols and AK-47s intended for the Iraqi security forces went missing. Petraeus forthrightly said recently that he didn’t think having safeguards in place to ensure the weapons were in the proper hands was as important as simply getting a slow-moving Pentagon bureaucracy to ship the weapons to Iraq. That decision, however, was one of several that has occasioned an unprecedented Pentagon Inspector General mission to Iraq to determine the extent of mismanagement and corruption — and possibly even criminal activity — in the sprawling logistics system.
Now, Petraeus seems to be saying that the Iraqi security forces need a surge of U.S. weaponry. It’s admirable that Petraeus is trying to rapidly increase the competence and capability of the Iraqi security forces — the lack of which makes up a large part of bipartisan criticism of the war. But what safeguards does Petraeus have in place to ensure that those guns won’t end up on the black market, or in the hands of U.S. enemies?