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Tuesday, December 21, 2004

bullets

according to this week's private eye (a great magazine that has a unique slant on the news and often has stories you will never see elsewhere) the US military has just bought 130 million bullets from the UK military, because they face a shortage.
lets look at that number again 130 million - that's a lot of bullets. a hell of a lot of bullets.
but lets back up a bit - the US military are facing a shortage... how can that be. the simple answer is of course iraq! but lets look at the number again 130 million bullets (ok for some american militias that is barely a weekends playing in the woods.... )
from the private eye story it appears that the one factory in the usa that manufactures the bullets cannot keep up with the demand.
i am going out on a limb here and thinking that this is a factory that is dedicated just to the american military, and that because of what it does it has to be highly defended and protected - but there is only one? whatever happened to the free market, is that why there is fighting going on in iraq - so we can just bring them monopolies - say it ain't so gi joe!
but i can understand why you would want this sensitive operation to be under very strict control and so you might only want the one - that way you have total quality control and you also have complete freedom to control supply - increase it when demand is high and lower it when demand is low (again it's the market stupid....)
somewhere along the line either the military planners have forgotten to place the requisition order (hey it happens), or the usa military have gone a little too gung ho and are firing bullets off like they are auditioning for the next john woo flick.

guess what? what pat what i can hear you cry. the ministry of defense is providing the bullets to the americans at book price - not a bit of profit being made from them. now on one hand you can understand that, don't want to be a war profiteer after all. but dammit man we are also providing troops into iraq to aid the americans free of charge (and last time i looked there were not that many british companies getting fat on the riches of iraq reconstruction!)

but lets go back to that number again 130 million bullets. why in all that is holy do the british army have a spare 130 million bullets, it's not like a cup of sugar, it's a 130 million bullets.....
hey at least this bit of arms trading might be called ethical arms trade (and who remembers new labour's promises on that!)

one more time 130,000,000 bullets. perhaps they should learn to be better shots or spend less time popping off shots into wounded combatants.
just a thought.

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