Lost Guns?!

I thought we were in Iraq to stop terrorists, not give them guns! A story in today's NY Times reported that the serial numbers of hundreds of thousands of guns paid for by American tax dollars and shipped to Iraq were not recorded. Of 505,093 individual weapons given to the Iraqi government, serial numbers for only 12,128 of them were recorded. These weapons included rocket propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles, machine guns, shotguns, semi-automatic pistols, and sniper rifles. Granted, only 370,000 of them were paid for by U.S. tax payers and only about 15,000 of them are missing, but try telling that to the parents, siblings, spouses, children, and/or friends of the U.S. soldiers gunned down by their own country's weapons. I'd usually make a wry, sardonic comment at this point, but I'll let the facts do the talking for me.
As someone who supported the war at its outset for the explicit reasons of capturing weapons of mass destruction and deposing Sadam Hussein, this blogger has seen the error of his ways in allowing an equivocating, self-righteous, imperialist government take our country anywhere, let alone to war. This election is a prime example; many Democrats are shifting right, trying to appeal to moderate voters and Republicans are running away from the President. How can we expect an honest, concerted effort to reform not only our own government, but the one being propped up in Iraq, if our officials are running to check the latest polls before every speech? I believe that in all things, we reap what we sow, including politics. If our nation's capitol is besieged by money-grubbing, pork-barrelling politicians and lobbyists, what type of government should we expect in Iraq? So before we go picking at the speck of sawdust in Sadam's eye, we should have pulled the plank out of our own. Instead of bombing Baghdad, we should have figured out what we needed to do here at home first. Now, we're caught like Wylie Coyote in trap of our own design and the shadow of the boulder about to smack us is getting bigger...