How to avoid the finger of blame... point at somebody else.

Italians discover huge arms deal headed for Iraq:

Their discovery led anti-Mafia investigators down a monthslong trail of telephone and e-mail intercepts, into the midst of a huge black-market transaction, as Iraqi and Italian partners haggled over shipping more than 100,000 Russian-made automatic weapons into the bloodbath of Iraq.

As the secretive, $40 million deal neared completion, Italian authorities moved in, making arrests and breaking it up. But key questions remain unanswered.

For one thing, The Associated Press has learned that Iraqi government officials were involved in the deal, apparently without the knowledge of the U.S. Baghdad command -- a departure from the usual pattern of U.S.-overseen arms purchases.

Why these officials resorted to "black" channels and where the weapons were headed is unclear.

The purchase would merely have been the most spectacular example of how Iraq has become a magnet for arms traffickers and a place of vanishing weapons stockpiles and uncontrolled gun markets since the 2003 U.S. invasion and the onset of civil war.

The private contractors are out of control:

There are now nearly as many private contractors in Iraq as there are U.S. soldiers — and a large percentage of them are private security guards equipped with automatic weapons, body armor, helicopters and bullet-proof trucks.

They operate with little or no supervision, accountable only to the firms employing them. And as the country has plummeted toward anarchy and civil war, this private army has been accused of indiscriminately firing at American and Iraqi troops, and of shooting to death an unknown number of Iraqi citizens who got too close to their heavily armed convoys.

Not one has faced charges or prosecution.

There is great confusion among legal experts and military officials about what laws — if any — apply to Americans in this force of at least 48,000.

And the Pentagon can't keep track of our own weapons:

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of the weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting US forces in Iraq.

The report from the Government Accountability Office indicates that US military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops. The highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons was 14,000, in a report issued last year by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

And weaponry from the Iraq/Iran war is still available... weaponry that we probably sold Saddam:

Old Iran-Iraq war era land mines were used in about 15 percent of the roadside bombs that exploded or were detected in northern Iraq during January, according to Navy Lt. Sarah Wilson, an explosives officer based in Tikrit.

Many of them were believed to have come from this border area.

"All of that unexploded ordnance, minefields and shrapnel _ it's still out there," said Lt. Col. Ron Ward, 49, who helps train Iraqi guards.

So how can Bush say this with a straight face?

U.S. President George W. Bush said Thursday he believes Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will explain during his visit to Iran that delivering weapons to the hands of Iraqi militants is a destabilizing measure, with consequences.

Bush held a news conference at the White House before taking a long weekend at his parents' home in Kennebunkport, Maine.

"His message, I'm confident, will be to stabilize, don't destabilize," said Bush.

"He knows that weapons being smuggled into Iraq from Iran and placed into the hands of extremists, over which his government has no control, all aimed at killing innocent life, is a destabilizing factor."

Have you checked out the foreign fighters in Iraq, Georgie? Most of them are from your pal's country, Saudi Arabia. Your pals are killing our soldiers, George. What are you going to do about it?

Right. Blame Iran.