Some of the Missing Weapons in Iraq Flown by Bout Aircraft

By Douglas Farah

Today's Washington Post brings the disturbing news of tens of thousands of weapons that were supposed to be delivered to Iraq from Bosnia that are now unaccounted for.

In fact, the number is likely far larger than the 190,000 mentioned in the story. And as the story notes, many of those missing weapons have likely been used against U.S. forces in Iraq, having been acquired by the insurgents.

This incredible lack of control, and the deadly blow back such negligence has on U.S. troops fighting under already-harsh circumstances, is one of the main themes (pardon the promotion, but it is valid, I think) of our new book, Merchant of Death.

While the GAO report on which the Post based its story is useful, in fact the problem is far larger, as we show. Viktor Bout's aircraft, we found, transported at least 200,000 AK-47 assault rifles from Bosnia arsenals, supposedly to Iraq in 2004, although there was no record of the weapons ever having arrived in Iraq.

Our reporting was triggered by this Amnesty International report from August 2006. The report shows that "Large quantities of small arms and light weapons from the Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) war-time stockpiles and tens of millions of rounds of ammunition were exported and supposedly shipped to Iraq by a chain of private brokers and transport contractors under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) between July 31, 2004 and June 31, 2005." My full blog is here.

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