What Happened To The Weapons?
A published report says investigators don't know what happened to about a third of the guns given to Iraqi security forces – and who has them now.
That's according to The Washington Post, which says a Government Accountability Office study shows U.S. military officials have lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005.
The paper says the highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons – which were given to Iraqi forces as part of their training - was 14,000.
Bombs, meanwhile, continue. Explosions Monday, in Tal Afar and Baghdad, have killed 37 people and injured 48.
Police in Tal Afar say Monday's blast was the work of a suicide bomber who slammed his truck into a crowded Shiite neighborhood. Brig. Gen. Rahim al-Jibouri, commander of Tal Afar police, says the trucks cargo of explosives was hidden by a layer of gravel. Within an hour of the attack, authorities imposed a complete curfew on the city.
Abdullah, who also is mayor of Tal Afar, says most of the dead, he said, are women and children. Rescue workers are still digging in the rubble for more victims.
Tal Afar - a city which the U.S. military initially cited as success story after major operations were said to have cleared the city of insurgents - has been the frequent site of Sunni attacks in the past year.
Many of them stemmed from allegations by a 50-year-old Sunni Arab woman, who came forward last February and said Iraqi soldiers raped her when they raided her house searching for weapons. Sunni insurgents have kidnapped and killed dozens of Iraqi security officials in response.
In Baghdad Monday, a roadside bomb killed nine civilians and wounded eight during rush hour.
Police say the bomb was at the Zaafaraniyah intersection in the Jisr Diyala area, a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in Iraq.
In other recent developments:
In recent weeks, some U.S. military commanders have said that additional troops will be needed into 2008 and suggested that a verdict on Bush's current troop increase be delayed until November.
But many Democrats and some Republicans in Congress, restive over the increasingly unpopular war, have made clear that they want a fundamental shift in war policy should the September assessments fail to show clear progress. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, also has dismissed any suggestion of waiting beyond September for a verdict on Bush's war policy.
On Sunday, Gates said he still expected the Bush administration to make a "strategic reassessment" in September on U.S. involvement in the four-year war should there be little political progress.
Gates, a member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group until he was nominated as defense secretary last November, also acknowledged that he probably would have sided with other members of the study group in urging the U.S. to reduce its military involvement should there be little political gains.
But he said since then, the U.S. has had unexpected, good progress on the local level in Iraq.
"Circumstances changed in a different way," Gates said. "That's the process we hope will evolve over time."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice agreed.
Security "has improved some" because of U.S. and Iraqi cooperation, she said Sunday. Military commanders have attributed the decline in violence in Anbar to their efforts to work with local tribal leaders who grew sick of insurgency-spawned bloodshed and turned their backs on al-Qaida.
"Clearly, too, we have a lot of work to do on the political side," she said. But, she added, "I would not underestimate the importance of the continuing work of the leaders of these very powerful parties in Iraq."
Rice said that the type of violence in Iraq due to "large-scale sectarian death squads" has diminished, but al-Qaida-inspired violence still "can get off the big car bomb" that kills civilians.
She said the Iraqi parliament probably could have passed a national oil reconciliation law with just a simple majority vote, but instead the lawmakers had wanted to reach a real consensus, which "makes a lot of sense."
A majority vote would get the law passed "but it would not have the force of all of the groups that wanted to do this," she said. "They don't want a 51-49 on constitutional reform."
Gates appeared on NBC television's "Meet the Press" and CNN's "Late Edition," while Rice spoke on "Fox News Sunday" and CBS's "Face the Nation."