And finally…shock-ing audit

The figure has been arrived at by rights group Amnesty International based its assessment on a 2016 US government audit it has obtained through a Freedom of Information request.

It found that America’s Department of Defense did not keep accurate records on the distribution and location of supplies sent to Iraq which includes tens of thousands of assault rifles, hundreds of mortar rounds and hundreds of Humvee armoured vehicles.

The declassified audit revealed that the DoD “did not have accurate, up-to-date records on the quantity and location” of a vast amount of equipment – destined for the Iraqi Army – in the two Middle Eastern countries.

“This audit provides a worrying insight into the US Army’s flawed – and potentially dangerous – system for controlling millions of dollars’ worth of arms transfers to a hugely volatile region,” said Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty International’s arms control and human rights researcher.

“It makes for especially sobering reading given the long history of leakage of US arms to multiple armed groups committing atrocities in Iraq, including the armed group calling itself the Islamic State.”

The audit found several failings in how the equipment was logged and monitored from the point of delivery onward.

These include fragmentary record-keeping in arms depots in Kuwait and Iraq, including information logged across multiple spreadsheets, databases and on hand-written receipts.

Large quantities of equipment were manually entered into multiple spreadsheets and increased the risk of human error.

The audit also revealed incomplete records, meaning those responsible for the equipment were unable to track its location or status.

It is also claimed that the US DoD did not have responsibility for tracking transfers immediately after delivery to the Iraqi authorities, despite the fact that the department’s Golden Sentry programme is mandated to carry out post-delivery checks.

In response, the US military has pledged to tighten up its systems for tracking and monitoring any future transfers to Iraq.

Responding to the Amnesty report, The Pentagon said: “We have a very good system of accounting for equipment and tracking it all the way but it’s never going to be perfect and there are localised inefficiencies.”

“Sending millions of dollars’ worth of arms into a black hole and hoping for the best is not a viable counter-terrorism strategy; it is just reckless,” Mr Wilcken added.