Ignore this!

Iran is supplying al-Qaeda with weapons! Even though Iran helped us fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Even though Iran is mainly Shiite and al-Qaeda is mostly Sunni and from Saudi Arabia. Bush says Iran is bad! McCain says ShiiteSunniAl-QaedaMilitiasIranians are bad!

A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. A U.S. military spokesman attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding that emerged after an Iraqi Army general in Karbala erroneously reported the items were of Iranian origin.

When U.S. explosives experts went to investigate, they discovered they were not Iranian after all.

Oops...

It took a Democrat to take the first obvious step

To protect the United States at home:

WASHINGTON, April 27 The U.S. attorney general would have the power to bar suspected terrorists from buying guns under legislation proposed by the U.S. Justice Department.

The legislation would give the attorney general the ability to deny a gun purchase if the buyer was found "to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism," The New York Times reported Friday. U.S. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J., who sponsored similar legislation that died in the Republican-controlled Congress, introduced the current bill.

"It took years, but the administration finally realized that letting terrorists buy guns is dangerous," he said in a statement. Under current law, suspects on federal watch lists for suspected terrorists can buy guns if background checks don't turn up any of the standard prohibitions for gun buyers, such as felony convictions.

A Government Accountability Office review found that in 2005 federal law enforcement officials approved 47 of 58 gun applications from terrorism suspects in a nine-month period, the Times reported.

Update: The Republicans are truly helpless on this subject, so don't look to them to solve our gun problems. Their hands are tied.

Since we always invade countries that we sell arms to...

Does this mean we will be invading Ethiopia next because of their WMDs?:

WASHINGTON, April 7 — Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea because of the country’s nuclear test, Bush administration officials allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from the North, in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, according to senior American officials.

The United States allowed the arms delivery to go through in January in part because Ethiopia was in the midst of a military offensive against Islamic militias inside Somalia, a campaign that aided the American policy of combating religious extremists in the Horn of Africa.

American officials said that they were still encouraging Ethiopia to wean itself from its longstanding reliance on North Korea for cheap Soviet-era military equipment to supply its armed forces and that Ethiopian officials appeared receptive. But the arms deal is an example of the compromises that result from the clash of two foreign policy absolutes: the Bush administration’s commitment to fighting Islamic radicalism and its effort to starve the North Korean government of money it could use to build up its nuclear weapons program.

I'm warning all tinpot dictators again. If we sell you weapons, be prepared to be invaded later. Have oil? Be prepared to be invaded sooner. .....

Wait a minute. Does Ethiopia have oil?

Oh my goodness, yes it does. And the Chinese are interested.

Israeli sells arms to Iraqi fighters

Kinda like us selling military equipment to Iran? Or something weirder? (my bold)

Ma'ariv Daily has reported that an Israeli retired officer sells weapons to terrorist groups in Iraq.

Shmoel Avivi, an Israeli retired officer, had established a firm in Iraq 2 years ago, which secretly sold arms to terrorist groups in Iraq, Ma'ariv reported.

Amnesty International reported that Avivi was one of the biggest weapon dealers in the Middle East.

Iraqi sources earlier announced that terrorist attacks in Iraq were backed by the intelligent agencies of CIA and Mossad and the secret agents of Iraqi former regime.

Earlier, Iraqi parliament security commission chairman Hadi Ameri had accused the occupying soldiers of secretly directing the terrorist attacks and forming terror squads in Iraq.

Russia is just taking care of some loose ends?

What on earth is going on?

A journalist who fell to his death from a fifth-storey window had received threats while preparing a report claiming Russia planned to provide sophisticated weapons to Syria and Iran, his newspaper said Tuesday.

Prosecutors have opened an inquest into the death of Ivan Safronov, a military affairs writer for the daily Kommersant. He died Friday in what some media said could have been murder.

The paper reported that Safronov had told his editors he would write a story about Russian plans to sell weapons to Iran and Syria via Belarus, but said he had not submitted the article.

Kommersant said Safronov recently told colleagues he had been warned he would face a criminal investigation on charges of revealing state secrets if he reported allegations that Russia had struck a deal to supply advanced Iskander missiles to Syria. Such a contract would upset the balance of forces in the Mideast and likely anger Israel and the United States.

and:

Federal and local law enforcement authorities are investigating a shooting in Prince George's County that critically injured a prominent intelligence expert who specializes in the former Soviet Union.

Paul Joyal, 53, was shot Thursday, four days after he alleged in a television broadcast that the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin was involved in the fatal poisoning of a former KGB agent in London.

Law enforcement sources and sources close to Joyal, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said the motive for the shooting was unclear. But several sources confirmed that FBI investigators are looking into the incident because of Joyal's background as an intelligence expert and his comments about the Alexander Litvinenko case.

Remember the polonium case? Another round of Don't-Mess-With-Putin?

Update 3/7: Bryan of Why Now? has some excellent points about the Russian journalist Ivan Safronov and what he was working on:

In the old days the transaction would have gone through Bulgaria, but now they use Belarus because Aleksandr Lukashenko needs to pay his bill for Russian natural gas.

It’s a pretty interesting shopping list: MiG-29 and Su-30 fighters, Iskander [SS-26 Stone] surface-to-surface missiles, S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems, and the Pantsyr-S1 missile/cannon close support anti-aircraft defense systems. The anti-aircraft systems are top shelf and pose a real problem for an attacking air force. The aircraft and Iskander systems are targets and a waste of money against either the US or Israel, unless the intention is to divert resources.

Putin has transferred his belief system from Karl Marx to Gordon Gekko, so he will sell weapons to anyone with cash.

Like Henry II of England, he doesn’t have to order people to be eliminated, it just happens. Of course, this might be the result of the people who talked to Safronov in the UAE realizing they should have kept their mouths shut, and removed a potential obstacle to their career advancement.

Spreading the love around

Apparently we like to build weapons with our allies. Must be a bonding type thing:

Abu Dhabi: The United States is planning to jointly produce tank components, light armoured vehicles and other products in Saudi Arabia, according to a senior US military official.

"Our biggest co-production project in the Middle East is in Egypt, where we jointly produced 1025 M1A1 tanks. In Saudi Arabia we are still in the planning phase, though the project initially will not be as big as what we have in Egypt, but there is good potential for growth there," Brigadier General Clinton Anderson, head of the US Army's Security Assistance Command, told Gulf News yesterday.

Even though no co-production projects have been planned with the UAE, relations and cooperation between the two countries are excellent, the general said.

United States has 32 co-production programmes with other countries and their total value exceeds $32 billion (Dh117.7 billion).