Parse this

[chickenfeet]

The BBC is carrying a story about arms exports to Iraq. Or at least that is what it's about on the surface. Is it just me or is this story in fact interweaving three essentially separate stories to create an overall impression that isn't supported by the facts. The headline and intro para seem to be suggesting that weapons from Bosnia are being routed to Iraqi insurgents due to something. The "something" isn't explicit but the impression is that it's American ineptitude and/or corruption.

However, dissecting the story reveals three quite separate plot lines:

• The US is buying arms in Bosnia to equip the Iraqi armed forces. This has upset the UN agency responsible for weapons control in the area but it isn't implied that these arms have fallen into the wrong hands. However Amnesty thinks there is a risk that they may end up in the wrong hands. No shit! Anything that goes to the Iraqis may end up in the wrong hands but what's the solution. Not rearm the Iraqi security forces?
  
• The paper trail of a batch of weapons from Bosnia to a UK dealer looks dodgy. Not a scintilla of evidence of a US or Iraqi connection.
  
• Weapons apparently sold by an Italian firm to the Iraqi police have ended up in the hands of the insurgents. No connection to Bosnia or the US.
  
  So why are these three stories presented in this interlinked way? Anybody have a more charitable explanation?

Comments

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Incompetence?

Or because the reporter has some unsupported evidence about a connection between the UK firm and Iraq, and it got revised out.

But I agree that there's less of a story here. (The Bosnian story is a bit concerning, mostly because the UN argument that it may cause people to keep their guns longer may be accurate.)

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

(The Bosnian story is a bit concerning, mostly because the UN argument that it may cause people to keep their guns longer may be accurate.)

I quite see the UN guys point that the US was making their job harder both by giving the Bosnians an incentive to hang on to weapons and by not providing more information that would help them account for what was around. That's just not very sexy I guess.

[parisbaby-2003.livejournal.com]

I blame sunspots.

Either that or the writer's tighty-whiteys were a tad binding that day, causing fatal distraction from citing his references.

(This is of course assuming that the staff writer is a male...)

[shezan.livejournal.com]

My take is that any weapons leaving Bosnia should be a good thing; and as you say there's something pretty faux-naïf in not seeing that the Iraqi security forces should be armed. But this looks like 1. the UN bureaucracy in Bosnia, whose record, I might add, is considerably less than stellar, complain that a simple deal is replacing their complex subsidised programme, & 2. whenever a desk journalist sees "weapons deals" their eyes go round and they feel they're up there with Woodstein. Add to this the low-intensity anti-American static pervading that kind of story...

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I am feeling in a pretty clear mood this evening. Arms trade bad. Period.

Into Iraq (where provenance may be open to doubt) double bad.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Arms trade bad. Period.

So the Iraqi security forces shouldn't be armed?

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Well, from other sources, the Iraqi armed forces seem to be quite leaky, with weapons being lost and allies getting shot, so maybe not arming the armed forces may not be too bad a thing.

Perhaps we could work out from the Iraqis to the US and UK armies? And then the Russians, Italian and French...

Imagine...

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Perhaps we could work out from the Iraqis to the US and UK armies? And then the Russians, Italian and French...

And the Ugandans and the Taleban and Janjarweed and the Iranians and the drug gangs in Toronto

I think my imagination is in overload