Halfway down the Danube

Missing: some 6,000 missiles, give or take a couple thousand

Our reader Kevin would rather if we didn't refer to the New York Times so much. I'm sorry if I can't oblige today, Kevin.

Via the Washington Monthly, a link to an article about even more missing missiles in Iraq.

American intelligence agencies have tripled their formal estimate of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile systems believed to be at large worldwide, since determining that at least 4,000 of the weapons in Iraq's prewar arsenals cannot be accounted for, government officials said Friday. A new government estimate says a total of 6,000 of the weapons may be outside the control of any government, up from a previous estimate of 2,000, American officials said.

Well, I'm not going to fly over Iraq anytime soon, I tell you that. The officials don't know exactly when the missiles disappeared, so we won't be pointing fingers quite yet. They also don't know whether the weapons have left the country. They think not. That doesn't seem good enough at all.

OK, so they are not easy to use. Terrorists would need some training to be able to fire them accurately at planes, civilian or no. Somehow, this does not make me feel any better.

Posted by claudia at November 7, 2004 10:46 AM