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    US Completing Large Arms Sales to Iraq

    WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- The United States plans to go ahead with a nearly $11 billion sale of arms and training to Iraq despite concerns about the country's future, officials said.The sale of the weapons -- some of which have been delivered -- is proceeding even though Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, hasn't fulfilled an agreement that would have limited his ability to de-emphasize the Sunnis and turn the military into a sectarian force, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
    U.S. diplomats, including Ambassador to Iraq James F. Jeffrey, have said they're concerned about the military relationship with Iraq, with some saying there could be political fallout if not managed properly by President Obama's administration.

    "It is very risky to arm a sectarian army," Rafe al-Essawi, Iraq's finance minister and a Sunni politician, told the Times. "It is very risky with all the sacrifices we've made, with all the budget to be spent, with all the support of America -- at the end of the day, the result will be a formal militia army."
    http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/.../?spt=hs&or=tn

    I'm more worried about this arms sale than the Saudi one, though I approve of neither.

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    waltky (11-10-2012)

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    This troubles me.....also something else that has not been mentioned much in the Media. But I believe Maliki told Obama that if any uniformed US Soldiers would have remained other than some advisors, that they would be arrested by the Iraqis.

    71 billion just between Iraq and the Saud. Then there is Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman. More than likely over 150 Billion right there.
    History does not long Entrust the care of Freedom, to the Weak or Timid!!!!! Dwight D. Eisenhower ~

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    Cool

    Granny says, "Dat's right - dey oughta be buyin' dey's weapons from us...

    Iraq reconsiders $4 billion Russian arms plans
    Nov 10,`12 -- Iraq is reconsidering plans to buy more than $4 billion in arms from Russia, officials said Saturday, throwing the proposed purchase into question just weeks after it was announced.
    The turnaround follows the ouster of Russia's defense minister earlier this week, and allegations by Iraqi lawmakers and local media that the pending deal is tainted by graft. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki traveled to Moscow in October and outlined plans to buy the weapons, including helicopter gunships and air defense missiles. The deal would have strengthened Russia's ties to oil-rich Iraq at a time when the ruling regime of longtime Mideast ally Syria risks falling in the country's civil war.

    It now appears unlikely the sale will go through as previously planned. "When the prime minister returned from his trip to Russia, he started reviewing the deal as a whole," the prime minister's spokesman, Ali al-Moussawi, said Saturday. "The deal now is under investigation. So far, nothing has been proven. A new committee has been formed to avoid any suspicions." The comments came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin reshuffled the nation's top military brass following the removal of Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov earlier in the week.

    Putin tied Serdyukov's removal to an inquiry into alleged military corruption, though many in Russia believe he was fired because of a brewing battle over the distribution of hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of defense spending over the coming years. Officials from Russia's defense ministry and Rosoboronexport, the country's arms export company, were not available for comment Saturday. Iraqi media reports, including one that aired this week on the private al-Sharqiya TV channel, have suggested impropriety such as kickbacks by people involved in brokering the deal.

    Lawmaker Hakim al-Zamili, who sits on parliament's security and defense committee and is affiliated with anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's political bloc, said al-Maliki expects to negotiate a new deal with Russia that would seek additional equipment and new prices. "There was clear corruption," he said.

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    Iraq cancels $4.2bn Russian arms deal over 'corruption'
    10 November 2012 - Iraq is rebuilding its armed forces
    Iraq has cancelled a $4.2bn (£2.6bn) deal to buy arms from Russia because of concerns about "corruption", an Iraqi government advisor has said. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has suspicions about corruption within his own team, his spokesman told the BBC. The purchase - said to include attack helicopters and missiles - was only signed off in October. Iraq has been rebuilding its armed forces since the end of US-led combat operations against insurgents. One Russian military expert has suggested that the Iraqi authorities scuppered the Russian arms deal under pressure from Washington.

    'Arms monopoly'

    Announcing the cancellation of the purchase on Saturday, a spokesman for Prime Minister Nouri Maliki told AFP news agency that "when Maliki returned from his trip to Russia, he had some suspicions of corruption, so he decided to review the whole deal". "There is an investigation going on, on this," he added. The sale would have made Moscow - the main supplier of arms to Iraq under Saddam Hussein - the country's second-biggest arms supplier after the US. There has been no word from Russia about the cancellations. In early October, Mr Maliki said in a speech that he did not want Iraq to be "part of someone else's (arms) monopoly." But he faced criticism from political opponents who questioned buying from Russia, when multiple deals with the US had been signed.

    One Iraqi MP suggested that counterterrorism operations - the stated aim of the purchase - required improved intelligence, and not the 30 Mi-28 attack helicopters that were reported to be part of the deal. The contracts were announced to some fanfare on 9 October after talks between the two countries' prime ministers near Moscow. Mr Maliki - who said he was seeking "quick contracts to fight terrorism" - warned even before he left that anything he signed might be scuttled by parliament. And at the time the deal was agreed, analysts suggested that while it was clear Iraq wanted to diversify its weapons purchases, buying from Russia would only encourage the sense in Washington that the US was somehow "losing Iraq".

    Igor Korotchenko, head of the Moscow-based Centre for Analysis of World Arms Trade, told the BBC the cancellation was "absolutely unprecedented in the history of the Russian arms trade". "As soon as the deal was announced a month ago I said that the US would not allow Iraq to buy such huge quantities of weapons from Russia. I believe Washington regarded this as an absolutely unacceptable scenario," he said. "As far as talk about corruption is concerned, I think it's a smokescreen," he said, adding: "I can't see any scope for corruption in the Iraq deal. I believe this is just a pretext and the true reason is Washington applying pressure on Baghdad."

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20278774

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    If we really want them to do this on their own we have to give them the means to do it.

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    Exclamation

    ISIS intercepted US arms meant for Syrian rebels...

    Islamic State got U.S. weapons meant for Syrian rebels: study
    Dec. 14, 2017 -- Sophisticated weapons the U.S. military secretly provided to Syrian rebels ended up with the Islamic State, a study said Thursday.
    Conflict Armament Research, a British-based organization, examined 40,000 weapons and other items recovered from the Islamic State from July 2014 to last month -- time which the U.S.-led coalition removed militants from Iraq and Syria. The 201-page report concludes that "international weapon supplies to factions in the Syrian conflict have significantly augmented the quantity and quality of weapons available to IS forces -- in numbers far beyond those that would have been available to group through battlefield capture alone."

    The report said 90 percent of the weapons and ammunition studied originated in China, Russia and Eastern Europe, but some were provided by the United States and Saudi Arabia to Syrian opposition forces opposed to President Bashar al-Assad "These findings support widespread assumptions that the group initially captured much of its military materiel from Iraqi and Syrian government forces," the report said. According to the report, the arms included anti-tank weapons from the United States that the Islamic State acquired less than two months after leaving the factory. Other items affected were ammunition and chemical components used to make explosive devices.


    Conflict Armament Research, a British-based organization, said Thursday some U.S.-furnished weapons meant for Syrian rebels ended up with the Islamic State terror group.

    The U.S. government uses private companies to make the weapons because most militants use AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades from former Soviet bloc countries or China that aren't compatible with most U.S.-manufactured ammunition and other supplies. The report didn't determine a breakdown of the weapons captured or the rebels who sold or gave the arms to the terror group. "The main drivers of illicit weapons supplies are not the companies and states that manufacture weapons but the governments and entities that acquire weapons lawfully and subsequently divert them to unauthorized users," the report said.

    The secret arms supply is separate from the Pentagon's operation to arm the Syrian Democratic Forces. The report did not find any SDF weapons falling into Islamic State hands. Damien Spleeters, the lead author of the report, said the Islamic State "has been able to manufacture their own weapons and IED's on an industrial scale thanks to a robust chain of supply" that began in 2014.

    https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-N...l&utm_medium=6
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    How did arms bought by U.S. end up in the hands of ISIS?
    December 14, 2017 - The report could become a vital tool for understanding the terror group’s deadly industrial proficiency.
    The Islamic State (ISIS) group may stand alone in its brutality in Iraq and Syria, where it orchestrated civilian massacres and suicide bombings and salted people’s homes with thousands of improvised explosives. But a new report, three years in the making, describes the group as shrewd manufacturing and logistical planners who moved weapons, munitions and bombmaking materials throughout the war zone on a scale unprecedented for a terror organization.

    Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a weapons-tracking group based in Britain, documented more than 40,000 firearms and munitions across Iraq and Syria by dispatching field investigators in an arc stretching from the northern Syrian city of Kobane to south of Baghdad, Iraq’s capital — a rough tracing of the group’s path to conquer wide swaths of territory and establish its caliphate. The report, which the researchers call the most comprehensive to date about how the group obtained and fielded its weapons, was published Thursday and could become a vital tool for understanding the terror group’s deadly industrial proficiency. Here are a few takeaways:

    • ISIS used rockets supplied by the United States — possibly in violation of agreements with weapons makers.

    As The Washington Post reported in July, the Trump administration ended a secretive CIA operation to arm moderate Syrian rebels battling President Bashar Assad. Few details on what arms they received are known publicly, but researchers found numerous rockets in Iraq that appear to have been purchased by the United States and supplied to Syrian groups. In one instance, PG-9 73mm rockets, sold by Romanian arms manufacturers to the U.S. Army in 2013 and 2014, were found sprinkled across both battlefields. Containers with matching lot numbers were found in eastern Syria and recovered from an ISIS convoy in Fallujah, the report says. The rockets, adapted by the group to use in their launchers, gave fighters a potent weapon against U.S.-supplied tanks and armored Humvees.

    Records obtained by CAR from Romanian officials include agreements indicating the United States would not re-export those and other weapons, part of an effort to curb weapons trafficking. Saudi Arabia was another source of unauthorized weapons transfers to Syria, the report says. CAR’s report says the U.S. government did not respond to requests to trace this and other weapons documented by its researchers.

    It took only weeks for ISIS to get its hands on U.S. antitank missiles.

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