Frighteningly Incompetent

Cmon, don't you think the GOP are going to lose big this election because of debacles (and there are scores, maybe hundreds of them!) like this:

The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis, a federal report released Sunday has concluded.

This report was commissioned by Sen. John Warner (R-VA), who's one of the finally-come-around-to-it Admin critics on the War, so I'm guessing he knew this might be damaging to the GOP electoral hopes if it manages to get traction on the Monday of the last week before the vote.

How bad did they fuck up this time?

The American military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of nearly half a million weapons provided to Iraqis, the inspector general found, making it impossible to track or identify any that might be in the wrong hands.

Exactly where untracked weapons could end up — and whether some have been used against American soldiers — were not examined in the report, although black-market arms dealers thrive on the streets of Baghdad, and official Iraq Army and police uniforms can easily be purchased as well, presumably because government shipments are intercepted or otherwise corrupted.

Does this mean we might be supplying Al Queda or the insurgency with American made 9-millimeter pistols and assault rifles?

It gets worse -- check out their computer network back-up policy:

Mr. Bowen found that the American military was not able to say how many Iraqi logistics personnel it had trained — in this case because, the military told the inspector general, a computer network crash erased records. Those problems have occurred even though the United States has spent $133 million on the weapons program and $666 million on Iraqi logistics capabilities.

Is this front page New York Times story going to be picked up by the TV news networks? Is anyone in the Administration going to be challenged on it, even over-achiever Press Secretary Tony Snow?

Are these numbers just so big and steadily terrible that no one in the mainstream media gives a shit anymore? These are the lives of our fellow American soldiers we're talking about. This is a war El Presidente keeps telling us we have to win:

In its assessment of Iraqi weaponry, the inspector general concluded that of the 505,093 weapons that have been given to the Ministries of Interior and Defense over the last several years, serial numbers for only 12,128 were properly recorded. The weapons include rocket-propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles, machine guns, shotguns, semiautomatic pistols and sniper rifles.

That's .5% recorded. Why, you ask?:

There are standard regulations for registering military weaponry in that way, governed by the Department of Defense small-arms serialization program. The inspector general’s report said that when asked why so many weapons went to Iraq with no record of serial numbers, American military officials in Baghdad replied that they did not believe the regulations applied to them.

Ah, now that makes sense. Of course they didn't. Why should they be any different from Bush and his cronies way up at the top.