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Many M-16s, the conventional wisdom goes, entered Syria after militants seized thousands of them from Iraq’s struggling security forces, which in turn had received the guns — along with armored vehicles, howitzers and warehouses’ worth of other equipment — from the Pentagon before American troops left the country in 2011. The militants’ abrupt possession of former American matériel was part of the battlefield turnabout last summer that led Julian E. Barnes, a Wall Street Journal correspondent, to tweet a proposed name for the Pentagon’s anti-militant bombing campaign: Operation Hey That’s My Humvee. And yet by this year, for all the attention the captured weapons had received, M-16s were seemingly uncommon in Syria. The expected large quantities had eluded researchers.
The investigator urged his host, a local security official, to rush after the Kurd and ask if he would allow the rifle to be photographed and its origins ascertained. Soon the investigator (who works for Conflict Armament Research, a private arms-tracking organization in Britain, and who asked that his name be withheld for safety reasons) found a surprise within his surprise. The rifle, which its current owner said had been captured from the Islamic State last year, was not an M-16. It was a Chinese CQ, an M-16 knockoff that resembles its predecessor but has a starkly different arms-trafficking history.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/magazine/where-the-islamic-state-gets-its-weapons.html
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday April 29 2015, @01:52AM
Sort of interesting. Are the writers of TFNYTA (gesundheit!) trying to argue that Iraq isn't awash with US weapons and that the border between Iraq and Syria isn't sort of non-existent now? Are they trying to imply that China makes Humvee copies too or that all the US weapons disappeared mysteriously? Did they mention Novorussian forces have at least one Humvee captured during battle from those the US gave it to in Kiev? Did they mention the billions the US has officially spent on giving away both lethal and “non-lethal” equipment during the last years (like night scopes)? No I refuse to RTFA, the NYT is garbage and I'm pretty sure I'm being rhetorical :D
So I guess this is another one of those deliberately stupid propaganda pieces from the US government since the argument goes: “I can't see it so it doesn't exist”. My brother had fun with that concept …when he was four years old :|
NYT tomorrow: ‘Learn How to Walk in Three Easy Steps, Shocking Top Ten List of Crawling and Walking Super Bowl Hollywood Celebrity Expert Advice’.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))