2002 Election

Bulgarian-produced weapons of Russian design, like this one
manufactured at the Arsenal plant, made up most of the deal.

THE HIDDEN WORLD OF arms trafficking was in the spotlight last weekend with an Associated Press http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293028,00.html target=_blank>report uncovering a $40 million weapons deal that would have sent more than 100,000 automatic weapons of Russian design to Iraq. But, before the contract could be completed and shipments put into motion, the Italian and Middle Eastern middlemen in the deal were swept up by Operation Parabellum, an on-going investigation that was begun two years ago by Dario Razzi, an anti-Mafia prosecutor.

This operation targeted against organized crime first began in 2005 when investigators inquired into drug trafficking by Mafia kingpins. The scope of their activity soon widened as the team under Razzi began tracking mafia-linked arms deals first with Libya, and then with Iraq.

The AP obtained Italian court documents showing that the proverbial smoking gun (no pun intended) was unearthed early last year when police in Rome, in the course of a drug trafficking investigation, covertly opened the luggage of a suspect they'd been monitoring after he had checked in for a flight to Libya. They were expecting to find a load of narcotics. Instead, the suitcase contained helmets, body armor, and a weapons catalog.

The purchase of Russian-designed weaponry for Iraqi security forces is not unusual. Russian and other Soviet bloc/Warsaw Pact arms was what the Iraqi forces already had in stock, and it is the type of equipment that the troops now fighting alongside U.S. forces are most familiar with.

Concern about past problems with having the U.S. military make the buys may be one of the reasons that there were Iraqi government officials controlling the purchase. Those same officials also did not inform the U.S. government that the procurement had been initiated, nor did they provide any details of which entities they were dealing with as intermediaries in the deal. Both of these actions are not the norm for these transactions, which have usually been closely controlled by the U.S. military.

In the past, problems with the procurement and subsequent inventory control of Russian-design equipment has cast doubt on the ability of the U.S. military to properly manage these acquisitions. Iraqi security forces have had to wait months longer than promised to receive rather basic equipment, such as armored vehicles. Some of the equipment that they had received was so substandard when compared with U.S. kit that Iraqi officers had quietly taken to telling Coalition and foreign liaison intelligence officers that the rank-and-file Iraqi troops felt at best like "second class citizens."

Whether or not the arms were actually intended for the Iraqi Security Forces is still unclear, but it is almost certain that officials in Baghdad involved in the deal will use the spotty past performance by the U.S. military on such contracts as justification for their decision to go and freelance this latest purchase on their own.

The mystery deepens with the revelation that intercepted emails and other communications that had been monitored by the Italians state that the Iraqi officials involved claimed the contract for these weapons had official American approval, an assertion that was denied by a U.S. spokesman in Baghdad.

"Iraqi officials did not make MNSTC-I aware that they were making purchases," said Lt. Col. Daniel Williams. MNSTC-I is the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq - the organization that oversees the arming and training of the Iraqi Army and National Police.

The details of the chain of companies involved are--as they say in Washington--malodorous, and suggest that the Iraqis were misleading the Italian middlemen in stating that the entire affair had been blessed by U.S. authorities.

The first of these is that the intercepts of communications and other information led the investigators to a group of Italian businessmen who were unrelated to any of the narcotics probes. However, these same businessmen were utilizing front companies that had been set up in both Malta and Cyprus. These two nations have relatively loose controls on arms trading, and both are notorious for hosting shell corporations and other corporate entities that act as the legal pass-throughs for trafficking in arms.

THINK PRESIDENT BUSH has put off reforming Social Security until 2005? Not necessarily. Republican congressman Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who's eager to enact reform legislation next year, raised the issue with Bush at a White House Christmas party. He was very encouraged by Bush's response.

NEW ORLEANS

When they faced off in a televised debate here last week, Suzanne Haik Terrell accused Senator Mary Landrieu of abandoning her Catholic faith because of her votes in favor of abortion. The comment--one of the strongest in-person attacks in recent memory--was virtually ignored by the media.

Perhaps that's because the charge is just one among dozens of harsh attacks traded in a race that is quickly becoming one of the most bitter of the 2002 election cycle. Maybe it's because Louisiana voters have heard similar sentiments before.