The Bush administration has begun delivering more than $3 billion in U.S-made armsto Iraq in a new program to introduce American firepower into Iraq’s aging Soviet-based arsenal.
When the Pentagon first began building the 320,000-strong Iraq Security Force in 2003, U.S. commanders decided to keep AK-47 rifles and other East Bloc gear. The theory was it would speed the training process since the Iraqis already knew how to use them.
Now, however, thinking has changed. Training Iraqis in American M-16 rifles, M-4 carbines and other weapons makes more sense if the U.S. wants to cement a long-lasting security cooperation.
“This is the first time they have actually started to buy our equipment in a big way,” said retired Army Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, a military analyst. “This is a major buy of U.S. equipment over there.”
Iraq is spending more than $3 billion in 2006 and 2007 contracts through a U.S. program known as Foreign Military Sales, according to a March 14 internal document produced by the Baghdad command and obtained by The Examiner.
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Besides small arms, the money will buy armored Humvee multipurpose vehicles, 5-ton trucks, ammunition, air surveillance radars and radios, the documents show.
A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on Iraq’s weapons buys.
Missing are any of the U.S’s most sophisticated weapon systems, such as the 60-ton M1 Abrams tank or Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Iraq’s defense ministry lacks the money and expertise to maintain high-tech components, so for now soldiers will rely on old Soviet-era tanks.
“The Iraqis are very good at keeping that junk going,” Maginnis said.
The Iraq’s 9th Mechanized Division in 2005 stood as the first army unit to take possession new tanks, in this case 77 refurbished T-72s donated by Hungary, a one-time Soviet satellite now in NATO.
They arrived at a Kuwait seaport, where the emirate sweetened the deal with 36 Soviet-era BMP armored personnel carriers. The tanks’ Iraqi flags stayed unfurled so as not to remind Kuwaitis of Saddam’s 1990 invasion and brutal occupation.
The big U.S. weapons package marks the end of an era. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein bought virtually every weapon in the Soviet arsenal: tanks, air defense artillery, ballistic missiles and MiG jet fighters.
Four years after the invasion, Iraq finally has established procedures for the government to spend its oil proceeds in an orderly way, making the FMS sale possible.
