The Office of Inspector General for the Pentagon’s findings from September 2016 were finally made available to the public on Wednesday as a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the human rights group Amnesty International.
The government audit revealed that the Department of Defense (DoD) “did not have accurate, up-to-date records on the quantity and location” of a significant amount of equipment coming into Kuwait and Iraq to provision the Iraqi Army.
You may be wondering, how does the government, the organization we are expected to “trust,” lose track of such an extensive amount of arms? More importantly, where are they going to end up and why are our taxpayer dollars being wasted like this?
How the US Army “Lost Track” of $1 Billion Worth of Weaponry
This past Wednesday, it was confirmed that the U.S. army lost over $1 billion worth of arms and military equipment designated under the Iraq Train and Equip Fund (ITEF), which was on its way to the Iraqi government in order to help them combat the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). Now, these items are completely unaccounted for, so they’re literally “lost in transit.”
The Army’s 1st Theater Sustainment Command “did not have effective controls to maintain complete visibility and accountability of ITEF equipment in Kuwait and Iraq prior to transfer to the Government of Iraq,” the audit said. Let’s keep in mind that this isn’t just small war items being transferred, but large commercial vehicles and weaponry.
Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty International’s Arms Control and Human Rights Researcher, explained: “This audit provides a worrying insight into the US Army’s flawed – and potentially dangerous – system for controlling millions of…