[gun-fucious]

American money is buying guns, uniforms, vehicles, and almost everything else for the new force, since the old army's equipment was taken by deserting soldiers or by looters after the war.

The Americans have bought 40,000 AK-47 assault rifles at $59 each from an undisclosed source.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031004/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_196

so who is producing 40,000 rifles for the US?

Romania?
Poland?
Russia?
Egypt?

[feedthehogs]

Rumor has it that they are surplus rifles thru Century Arms out of Boca Raton, Fla.

They are reported to have a White House connection.

[Hkmp5sd]

They are being manufactured in Poland from what I understand. The order was put out for the lowest bid.

[Moparmike]

If they work well, can I have one? I will pay up to $100 right this friggin moment.:D

Hell, my taxes paid part of it. Make it $90.:scrutiny: :mad:

[Brian Dale]

How do we get in on that group buy?

[gun-fucious]

2 million dollars for 40 k of rifles for a one time contract is one thing
but Poland needs a sustainable economy

selling units in the US retail market would be good for Polands economy

i kinda doubt Polish toasters or microwaves or coffeemakers are gonna compete against the Korean price point

for the good of the world economy,
i will buy one of these:
http://www.fabrykabroni.pl/mfoto/pm-98.gif

heres the 5.56 Beryl:
http://www.fabrykabroni.pl/BERYL.htm
http://hem.passagen.se/dadkri/Beryl.htm

it doesn't look like a 7.39 is in the current military inventory
maybe they are gonna modify the Radom Hunter:

http://hem.passagen.se/dadkri/Pictures/Hunter_1.gif


Poland bids to supply Kalashnikovs to Iraqi army
Reuters | Friday, August 8, 2003

Posted on 08/08/2003 10:54 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/960647/posts

Poland bids to supply Kalashnikovs to Iraqi army

WARSAW, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Poland, a U.S. ally in the war to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, wants to sell Soviet-designed assault rifles to a new Iraqi army, a Polish arms trader said on Friday.

The U.S.-led transitional administration in Iraq is considering equipping Iraq's reconstituted army with AK-47s because Iraqis are familiar with the weapon.

"We have placed a bid to supply 34,000 AK-47 rifles to Iraq," Roma Sarzewska, spokeswoman for arms trader PHZ Bumar, told Reuters. She declined to give more details.

Poland hopes to win the order because it is the staunchest Washington ally among the countries manufacturing the machinegun, designed in the 1940s by Mikhail Kalashnikov and still widely used in third-world countries.

An industry source said the rifles would be made by Polish gun-maker Radom Lucznik, a major arms supplier of the defunct Warsaw Pact before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Poland, which joined the NATO military alliance in 1999, is to take command of a multi-national stabilisation force to keep the peace in a zone of central-southern Iraq on September 1.

[gun-fucious]

Questions are Raised on Awarding of Contracts in Iraq
Sat Oct 4, 8:54 AM ET

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nyt/20031004/ts_nyt/questionsareraisedonawardingofcontractsiniraq

By PATRICK E. TYLER and RAYMOND BONNER The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq (news - web sites), Oct. 3 Last month the Iraqi Governing Council questioned why the American occupation authority had issued a $20 million contract to buy new revolvers and Kalashnikov rifles for the Iraqi police when the United States military was confiscating tens of thousands of weapons every month from Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s abandoned arsenals.

On Wednesday the Iraqi council, in a testy exchange with the occupation administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, challenged an American decision to spend $1.2 billion to train 35,000 Iraqi police officers in Jordan when such training could be done in Iraq for a fraction of the cost. Germany and France have offered to provide such training free.


These decisions are being questioned by Iraqi officials as Congress is also seeking to examine how the American occupation authority and the military are spending billions of dollars here. Iraqi officials and businessmen charge that millions of dollars in contracts are being awarded without competitive bidding, some of them to former cronies of Mr. Hussein's government.


"There is no transparency," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the Governing Council, "and something has to be done about it.


"There is mismanagement right and left, and I think we have to sit with Congress face to face to discuss this. A lot of American money is being wasted, I think. We are victims and the American taxpayers are victims."


A number of businessmen say they believe it is necessary to pay kickbacks to win contracts. A spokesman for one of the largest American corporations awarding subcontracts here, Bechtel, said his company had neither paid any kickbacks nor had been approached by Iraqis seeking to pay kickbacks. He said Bechtel made all of its contract information available on its Web site and at offices in Baghdad and Basra. A check of the Web site on Friday found no information, only a notice that the site was "under construction."


The lack of transparency and competition, Governing Council members said in interviews, may be encouraging corruption. They said they believed that many contracts had been inflated beyond the reasonable cost for the work, creating opportunities for kickbacks between prime contractors and subcontractors.


One council member, Naseer K. Chadirji, said: "As the Governing Council we are in a very weak legal position. We don't have the right to investigate these contracts."


He added, "I don't have the evidence, but I think there is corruption. This is a common grievance that people tell me."


An Iraqi executive, who made millions of dollars as an insider under the Hussein government and would not allow his name to be used, said a relative outside Iraq had asserted that a Bechtel executive was looking to become a silent partner in an Iraqi company that would be favored with subcontracts from Bechtel.


A senior Bechtel official in Iraq, Clifford George Mumm, said that his company "would fire immediately anyone who tried to do such a thing" and that he did not believe that any Bechtel executive would engage in the kind of behavior described.


Mr. Mumm said there had been no kickbacks on the 105 subcontracts Bechtel had signed with Iraqi firms.


Asked about Iraqi assertions that Bechtel and other major American companies were awarding contracts to Iraqis who had grown rich under Mr. Hussein, Mr. Mumm said all of the Iraqi businesses that received Bechtel subcontracts were vetted by the occupation authority under Mr. Bremer.


The largest and most prominent Iraqi subcontractor that has emerged belongs to the Bunnia family, which grew immensely wealthy under the former government and was known for lavishing gifts, especially luxury cars, on members of the Hussein family.


"It is hard to understand the rationale for giving them contracts," said an American businessman.


Bunnia family members, in interviews over the last several months, have denied that they supported the old government and have said their business skills are needed to rebuild the country.


Looking at a list of companies that received subcontracts from Becthel, Mr. Othman, the Governing Council member, said he recognized at least a half-dozen that had profited from close relations with Mr. Hussein or members of his family.

_


Samir Sumaidy, a member of the Governing Council who owns a construction firm doing business in China, said Friday that the Iraqi interim government received no information from Mr. Bremer's authority on how it was spending Iraqi and American funds.

An American businessman, who would not allow his name to be used, said the occupation authority was doling out contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars by simply telephoning favored companies and announcing, "I have a contract for you," as he characterized a telephone call he received this week.

Mr. Othman said, "I hope Congress knows what is going on, but if they don't know and we don't know, then God help everybody."

Council members said the contract to train Iraqi police officers in Jordan offended them because Jordan would draw a large payment from the dwindling Iraqi treasury and because many Iraqis resented Jordan's close ties to old government.

"The Iraqis are not very happy to see such large sums of money put in the hands of Jordan," said Mr. Chadirji, a lawyer and Governing Council member.

At a news briefing on Friday, Charles Heatly, a spokesman for the occupation authority, said 35,000 police offers were to be trained in Jordan because the necessary facilities did not exist in Iraq, an assertion that several Governing Council members challenged.

The Jordan plan was formally announced on Friday in a press release. Mr. Heatly said he thought that most council members had understood and agreed with Mr. Bremer's presentation on police training in their meeting on Wednesday.

But five council members said in interviews that the interim Iraqi government opposed the plan. "If we had voted, a majority would have rejected it," Mr. Chadirji said. "He told us what he did; he did not ask us."

The purchase of about 20,000 Kalashnikov automatic weapons, 50,000 revolvers and 10 million rounds of ammunition from Jordan has also been widely criticized by Iraqi Governing Council members.

The contract was issued by the Interior Ministry during the summer when it was being supervised by the former New York City police commissioner, Bernard B. Kerik. Mr. Kerik did not respond to requests for an interview.

"It is totally unnecessary to buy them from outside the country," said Mr. Chadirji, who noted that he had purchased a number of Kalashnikovs to arm his personal bodyguards and that the price in the local market was as low as $50 for each weapon.

Mr. Heatly said logistical problems associated with buying so many Kalashnikovs in small lots from the Iraqi market would be excessive.

There would be no cost if the occupation authority obtained them from the United States military, which is now the custodian of countless thousands of Iraqi weapons, many of them said to be in mint condition.

Mr. Heatly did not have figures for the number of Kalashnikovs in allied hands, but he said there were not enough of them to satisfy the requirements of the contract.

[Harry Tuttle]

the new Kalashnikovs are here!
the new Kalashnikovs are here!

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20031129/capt.ppc10311291111.iraq_ppc103.jpg
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/031129/481/ppc10311291111
Iraqi trainees of the ICDC, Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, are taught rifle drill by an Italian Army officer inside a former Iraqi Army base near the southern Iraqi town of Nasiriyah, Saturday, Nov. 29, 2003. After a four-week training course the ICDC will help Italian troops accomplish their military police task. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

[twoblink]

I notice fingers off the triggers on all 3, much better than our hollyweird.. :rolleyes:

[TarpleyG]

I wonder how much we pay for our troops' Colt M-16s/M-4s??? Bethcha it ain't $40... What a kick in the ???. They buy a better functioning weapon for probably 1/10th the price.

GT

[Langenator]

My unit's hand receipt lists 267 M-16A2 rifles, valued at $459 each. This is pretty close to the cost for the current M-16A4, 3200 of which are delivered to the DoD by FN each month.

[tiberius]

I just can't believe that we're givin 'em AK's. They're supposed to be good guys now. The bad guys carry AK's not the good guys. :)

[BigG]

Anybody think it's ironic that in the pic they have an Italian soldier teaching them how to fight? ;)

[Langenator]

The Italian isn't teaching them how to fight. He's supposedly teaching rifle drill, which I'm guessing means the Manual of Arms portion of what the US Army calls Drill and Ceremony, i.e. how to handle one's rifle on the parade ground.

[cbsbyte]

:)

[Standing Wolf]

The Americans have bought 40,000 AK-47 assault rifles at $59 each from an undisclosed source.

Oh. I guess the leftist extremists were right, after all: assault rifles are flooding the streets.

[lee n. field]

The Americans have bought 40,000 AK-47 assault rifles at $59 each from an undisclosed source.

Group Buy!!!

I'll take three.