U.S. ‘Lost’ 700K+ Weapons in Middle East

The U.S. military lost track of hundreds of thousands of firearms it brought to Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a New York Times Magazine report. The Pentagon doesn’t even know exactly how many weapons it took to the two countries in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and only about 48 percent of the best estimate can be accounted for in government records. Based on incomplete documents, it appears as though the Department of Defense provided at least 1.45 million firearms to forces in the two countries. That includes more than 978,000 assault rifles, about 266,000 pistols, and nearly 112,000 machine guns. About 700,000 of those weapons can be accounted for, and many of the rest are now regularly sold online in Iraq. The attempt to count these numbers has been led by author and former BBC journalist Iain Overton, The Times writes.