Speaking of Iran Contra (and apparently Miami, yet again)...

Um, why is this not the lead story everywhere? The New York Times delivers a Pulitzer-worthy piece on US arms shipments to Afghanistan, while everyone else is busy with Hillary and/or Obama hysteria:

"But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.

Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.

<snip>

In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.

Moreover, tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law. The company’s president, Efraim E. Diveroli, was also secretly recorded in a conversation that suggested corruption in his company’s purchase of more than 100 million aging rounds in Albania, according to audio files of the conversation."

Like I said... where the hell is the 24/7 coverage of this story? Consider that in one week we learn that the Pentagon sent (by accident) to Taiwan and now we learn about this, and neither story is getting the attention it needs. Why? Read the whole thing, all seven pages of this fine piece of reporting.

Comments

[Benny]

Recall, Adnan Khashoggi was a major arms dealer. He did not care to complete college.
When he got put in the pokey, Gold Finger, Peter Munk, bailed him out. His connections with the Marcos were most curious. So, now popping on the radar, young Mr Diveroli. His problem, he seemed not to take care of the crates on the old Ak-47 shells/ casings, and assorted. After all isn't it standard DOD procedure for it to dole out money to Yiddish middle men to provide the arms for one faction of Arabs to kill another faction of Arabs, and expect you, as an American taxpayer to pick up the tab, what you can't stomach the margins. Just because your kid does not drive a new luxury car, like Efraim, is no reason to get all in a tizzy. besides Cheney has hard wired this kind of procurement. Get over it, your kids will pay the final tab...

[dqueue]

Perhaps a reason to stifle the competition, sweeping Viktor Bout off the stage?