>A group of corrupt businessmen with ties to the Italian Cosa Nostra was discovered to have arranged for the shipping of 100,000 sophisticated machine guns to the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, allegedly to be supplied to the police in al-Anbar Province. The [Ministry of the Interior] was supposed to inform the US military about any such purchases, in accordance with America's colonial role in Iraq. It did not. The deal was worth $40 millon. Since the US has heavily armed the al-Anbar police, it is not plausible that they would need massive numbers of machine guns. The special police commandos of the Ministry of the Interior were largely recruited from the Badr Corps paramilitary of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. It is likely that the weapons were for them and their friends on the outside in Badr. Since a intra-Shiite civil war is building between Badr and its rival, the Mahdi Army, and since Badr corps are targeted by Sunni Arab guerrillas as "Iranian" agents, Interior may have felt it needed to give its special commandos and the Badr an advantage in fire power. Since the Iraqi government was essentially bolstering a militia, and the US wants to repress the militias, it could not let the Americans know about the deal. Italian investigators accidentally turned it up while trying to catch Mafia drug smugglers. They forestalled the deal from going through. This time.< -- Juan Cole
-- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
