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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-loses-sight-of-500-million-in-counterterrorism-aid-given-to-yemen/2015/03/17/f4ca25ce-cbf9-11e4-8a46-b1dc9be5a8ff_story.html

Well that happened!

They even closed their embassy there. Embassy security detail had to destroy their weapons before being allowed on a civilian flight out. Don't they normally have military aircraft for that sort of thing?

Those FDE-colored foregrips look so out of place on those black rifles. No wonder they wanted to get rid of them.

Those pics remind me of a local sporting goods store.

Interesting to note the Glocks. I had no idea the US military used them in any capacity.

A bit of a biased headline no?

Shouldn't it be Collapsing Yemini Government Loses Weapons?

I mean kind of hard for the Pentagon to track anything when the country is collasping.

So unless the writer believes we should occupy Yemen and create a new government he's casting the blame in the wrong direction.

That stuff should go well with all the US Taxpayer equipment previously provided to ISIL via Iraq.

At least this time the stuff in question were fairly insignificant.

 Ouze wrote:
That stuff should go well with all the US Taxpayer equipment previously provided to ISIL via Iraq.

Honestly though, I'm not at all surprised by this...

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
A bit of a biased headline no?

Shouldn't it be Collapsing Yemini Government Loses Weapons?

I mean kind of hard for the Pentagon to track anything when the country is collasping.

So unless the writer believes we should occupy Yemen and create a new government he's casting the blame in the wrong direction.

The US doesn’t hand this stuff over blind, they do try and make an effort to ensure that stuff will be put to a use that’s valuable to the US.

Think of it this way – if you gave a few thousand dollars of furniture to a guy who was down on his luck, and he then sold most of the furniture to buy drugs, and burnt the rest for heat, he was the guy who screwed up, but you also made a mistake investing a lot of money in to a wasted endeavour.

Of course, we can’t always know who’s going to squander aid and who isn’t. So the question then becomes whether the coup and instability in Yemen was foreseeable or not. Was it clear in the mid-2000s that Yemen was likely to fall apart with or without aid? I’m a million miles away from being an expert on this, so I’m not going to answer with any kind of certainty. But my thinking is that the coup has basically followed on from instability begun during the Arab Spring, and not many regional experts saw that coming, so maybe the arms were a reasonable investment that went pear shaped for reasons no-one could see coming.

 sebster wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
A bit of a biased headline no?

Shouldn't it be Collapsing Yemini Government Loses Weapons?

I mean kind of hard for the Pentagon to track anything when the country is collasping.

So unless the writer believes we should occupy Yemen and create a new government he's casting the blame in the wrong direction.

The US doesn’t hand this stuff over blind, they do try and make an effort to ensure that stuff will be put to a use that’s valuable to the US.

Think of it this way – if you gave a few thousand dollars of furniture to a guy who was down on his luck, and he then sold most of the furniture to buy drugs, and burnt the rest for heat, he was the guy who screwed up, but you also made a mistake investing a lot of money in to a wasted endeavour.

Of course, we can’t always know who’s going to squander aid and who isn’t. So the question then becomes whether the coup and instability in Yemen was foreseeable or not. Was it clear in the mid-2000s that Yemen was likely to fall apart with or without aid? I’m a million miles away from being an expert on this, so I’m not going to answer with any kind of certainty. But my thinking is that the coup has basically followed on from instability begun during the Arab Spring, and not many regional experts saw that coming, so maybe the arms were a reasonable investment that went pear shaped for reasons no-one could see coming.

From my limited involvement/knowledge of the Yemeni stuff, we definitely had no idea 5-10 years ago that it was going to be this bad over there.

A lot of special operations units are at least authorized to carry them, but I don't know of anyone actually being issued glocks.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
A bit of a biased headline no?

Shouldn't it be Collapsing Yemini Government Loses Weapons?

I mean kind of hard for the Pentagon to track anything when the country is collasping.

So unless the writer believes we should occupy Yemen and create a new government he's casting the blame in the wrong direction.

It is a Washington Post story, so making America look bad is a part of their standard checklist in publishing a story.

Not surprise at all

My first instinct was to suspect that the ATF was involved somehow. Then I read the article.

It's nothing compared to the perfectly good weapons that America has left in Vietnam these past 40 years. There are lots of perfectly good bombs, shells, and landmines exploding every year.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
It's nothing compared to the perfectly good weapons that America has left in Vietnam these past 40 years. There are lots of perfectly good bombs, shells, and landmines exploding every year.

There is a significant difference between unexploded ordinance and firearms.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
It's nothing compared to the perfectly good weapons that America has left in Vietnam these past 40 years. There are lots of perfectly good bombs, shells, and landmines exploding every year.

There is a significant difference between unexploded ordinance and firearms.

Russia did the same in Afghanistan.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
It's nothing compared to the perfectly good weapons that America has left in Vietnam these past 40 years. There are lots of perfectly good bombs, shells, and landmines exploding every year.

Kind of like all the perfectly good bombs the RAF left in Germany?

 Hordini wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
It's nothing compared to the perfectly good weapons that America has left in Vietnam these past 40 years. There are lots of perfectly good bombs, shells, and landmines exploding every year.

Kind of like all the perfectly good bombs the RAF left in Germany?

To be fair, Luftwaffe left a few in England too, even if I do not know the numbers!

Though it's true that most bombing campaigns from that era has left behind some presents, yes.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Hordini wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
It's nothing compared to the perfectly good weapons that America has left in Vietnam these past 40 years. There are lots of perfectly good bombs, shells, and landmines exploding every year.

Kind of like all the perfectly good bombs the RAF left in Germany?

To be fair, Luftwaffe left a few in England too, even if I do not know the numbers!

Though it's true that most bombing campaigns from that era has left behind some presents, yes.

Oh, I'm sure they did. My point was more that no major western power is really innocent when it comes to leaving behind unexploded ordnance.

I take offense to the statement that we left perfectly good bombs in Vietnam. A perfectly good bomb would have exploded on impact.

We left gakky bombs in Vietnam, thank you.