{"id":504,"date":"2005-01-12T21:41:47","date_gmt":"2005-01-13T03:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=504"},"modified":"2005-01-12T21:43:00","modified_gmt":"2005-01-13T03:43:00","slug":"nato-organizing-shipment-of-arms-to-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=504","title":{"rendered":"NATO Organizing Shipment of Arms to Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Iraq doesn&#8217;t need to go to the local military surplus store for a great deal on old equipment.  How about some <a href=\"http:\/\/story.news.yahoo.com\/news?tmpl=story&#038;cid=540&#038;ncid=736&#038;e=10&#038;u=\/ap\/20050112\/ap_on_re_mi_ea\/nato_iraq_afghanistan\">weapons for free<\/a>?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>NATO is organizing the shipment to Iraq of thousands of AK-47 assault rifles, dozens of Soviet-designed tanks and other weapons as part of the alliance&#8217;s program to help train and equip the Iraqi military, officials said Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Romania has offered 6,000 AK-47&#8217;s along with 500 machine guns, 300 sniper rifles and 100 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, while Estonia has offered 2,400 AK-47s and Denmark 104 pistols, alliance officials said.<\/p>\n<p>NATO also is arranging the transport of 77 T-72 tanks from Hungary to Iraq, the officials said on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n<p>All arms and military hardware were being given as a donation.<\/p>\n<p>The alliance agreed last year to help coordinate the supply of weapons to Iraq&#8217;s fledgling armed forces.<\/p>\n<p>Several former Warsaw Pact nations that joined NATO last year have surpluses of Soviet-era equipment, which military experts say is ideal for the Iraqi military because it [sic] familiar with those weapons from the days of Saddam Hussein.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Okay, so they&#8217;re crappy tanks.  They&#8217;re still tanks nevertheless, and the Iraqi government certainly cannot complain about the price.  Besides, a bad tank is still pretty good against a terrorist packing a rifle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iraq doesn&#8217;t need to go to the local military surplus store for a great deal on old equipment. How about some weapons for free? NATO is organizing the shipment to Iraq of thousands of AK-47 assault rifles, dozens of Soviet-designed tanks and other weapons as part of the alliance&#8217;s program to help train and equip [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-general","category-middle-east","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}