government conspiracies

"It seems strange that a pro-Western government, supported by the U.S. Army and other NATO countries on its own territory, would seek Russian or Chinese weapons through questionable channels," the anti-Mafia prosecutor wrote in seeking the arrest warrant that short-circuited the complex deal.

And so another shady arms deal is opened up for the world to see, all thanks to those "anti-Mafia prosecutors" in Italy, where they still take shady international business deals with dead seriousness.

Is it 1987 all over again? Not quite. The proceeds from the sale (a mere $6.6 million profit) would line the Italian conspirators' pockets, not fund U.S.-supported militias in another corner of the world. But the deal is of such questionable, unbelievable proportions that it's sure to reach wider than just a few Italian-Iraqi connections. The U.S. command in Iraq denies involvement, despite this:

Investigators say the prospect of an Iraq deal was raised last November, when an Iraqi-owned trading firm e-mailed Massimo Bettinotti, 39, owner of the Malta-based MIR Ltd., about whether MIR could supply 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles and 10,000 machine guns "to the Iraqi Interior Ministry," adding that "this deal is approved by America and Iraq."

The results of a few sinister Iraqi politicos or a wider scandal involving Russia (the Iraqis insisted on Russian-made, as opposed to Chinese-made, assault rifles) and other countries? The question is: Where did the $40 million come from to make the purchase? U.S. taxpayers? Oil revenue? It sort of makes the Oil-for-Food scandal relatively toothless.

Stay tuned.

So back in the "good ol' years" of the late '90s, it was good to know that fear was still a tactic used by the U.S. government to keep the populace in line, as evidenced by this rather paranoid brochure issued by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture that I've been holding onto for the past 8 years. The brochure asks questions like if you are a person who enters "elevators and expect[s] them to take you to another floor." Basically, the brochure asks if you are prepared for utter apocalypse. Well, are you?

See the document after the jump.