This morning, the New York Times is running a story accusing the United States Military of failing to track weapons intended for Iraqi security forces.
The report comes eight days out from the mid-term elections that will determine control of both houses of Congress.
The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis, a federal report released Sunday has concluded.
. . .
The answers came Sunday from the inspector general’s office, which found major discrepancies in American military records on where thousands of 9-millimeter pistols and hundreds of assault rifles and other weapons have ended up. The American military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of nearly half a million weapons provided to Iraqis, the inspector general found, making it impossible to track or identify any that might be in the wrong hands.
Exactly where untracked weapons could end up -- and whether some have been used against American soldiers -- were not examined in the report, although black-market arms dealers thrive on the streets of Baghdad, and official Iraq Army and police uniforms can easily be purchased as well, presumably because government shipments are intercepted or otherwise corrupted.
While the NYT criticism of the Bush Administration and our armed forces may not seem particularly newsworthy, the fact is that the Times ran a similar story about missing weapons in Iraq two years ago--right before the vote for President--and they did it
eight days before the election.
Coincidence? I think not.
The New York Times wonders why subscriptions and revenue are down! They can't even try to smear the current administration or influence voter sentiment with any sense of creativity or originality. They don't seem to get that the undecided voters who will likely influence this election don't read the New York Times.
You want objectivity when it comes to election reporting? You want accuracy? You want fairness? You aren't going to get it in the Media Spin Machine, that's for sure. The Times has one agenda: smearing the administration. If they have to paint our troops as incompetent in the process, they'll do it because they don't care. No one in the establishment media cares as long as their political agenda is served.
Thankfully, we all know better than that.
When I see stories like this it screams one thing loud and clear: the Democrat leadership is not confident about their ability to win control back in eight days...
...nor should they be.
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com
