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| Pentagon decides Chinese, Russian, Korea and Paki efforts to poliferate weapons are insufficient |
| 2003-10-08 |
| hattip to Military.com Using a fake company, congressional investigators were able to buy off the Internet excess Pentagon lab equipment and protective gear that terrorists could use to make chemical and biological weapons. Fellow shoppers on the Internet site also resold the items to buyers in the Philippines, Malaysia, Egypt, and other countries, the General Accounting Office said in a report to the House Government Reform Committee’s national security subcommittee. I strongly protest this policy. This foriegn competition is unfairly increasing prices for domestic terrorists and meth lab owners. "Public sales of these Department of Defense excess items increase the risk that terrorists could obtain and use them to produce and deliver biological agents within the United States," it said. Gregory Kutz, the GAO’s director for financial management and assurance, said that, using a fictitious company, his agents were able to buy $4,100 worth of items, including a biological safety cabinet, a bacteriological incubator, a centrifuge, an evaporator, and chemical and biological protective suits and related gear. I could outfit my RV as a He said the original acquisition value of the items purchased was $46,960. That’s like 10 toilet seats. "DOD should not be a discount outlet for bioterrorism equipment," said Rep. Christopher Shays (R., Conn.), chairman of the panel. The state of Conneticut demands that terrorists pay full prices for their lab supplies. The Customs Bureau under the Department of Homeland Security monitors sales and exports of certain biological equipment, including the items purchased by the GAO, and sales to the public are legal. Technically, most of what the guys do in Jackass the Movie is legal also. Legal doesn’t equate to prudent. The Pentagon in January stopped sales of protective gear, but the GAO found that 4,000 suits and 26,000 other items such as gloves and hoods were sold since then. We forgot to tell QVC. Kutz said that in the last 3 1/2 years the Pentagon had sold at least 18 safety cabinets, 199 incubators, 521 centrifuges, 65 evaporators, and 286,000 protective suits. Please, tell me this was an FBI sting. Please. "We were surprised at what we could buy," Keith Rhodes, the GAO’s chief technologist, said. Shays said that his panel heard GAO testimony last year that new protective gear was being sold cheaply on the Internet as surplus while military units were trying to purchase the same equipment at far higher prices, and that some military units and first responders were receiving defective equipment. The report acknowledged that some of the equipment was also available from other sources, such as medical-industry suppliers, but said that, coupled with lax inventory management of toxic materials at some federal labs, there was increased risk that a terrorist could use the equipment to produce a biological-warfare agent such as crude anthrax. We have found the enemy in the mirror. Why is he drooling stupidly? |
| Posted by:Superhose |
| #2 "Please, tell me this was an FBI sting. Please." Amen to that. I don't know if it's feasible but if some sort of tracking device could be attached to these items as they move around the world, it might point us n the direction of bad guys. Did we do that? Nah, proly not. |
| Posted by: JDB 2003-10-8 9:39:36 PM |
| #1 One problem is the inability of our government to sell its surplus at anything resembling a fair price. I would suspect that there may be a regulation that limits sales if the value of the item is greater than a given percent of retail. So, to sell, the item is valued too low. Voila! You can sell your surplus. Another is that the Federal government is so huge that it is impossible for one unit to deal efficiently with another. The ability of the Department of the Interior to transfer assets to the Department of Defense is limited, at best, and in most cases impossible to do under both law and budget regulations. It points out the dramatic necessity to reduce the size of government. With all our laws and regulations and policies, we still can't get common sense things done in government. It's just too big. |
| Posted by: Chuck Simmins 2003-10-8 9:54:19 AM |