Washington bungling never seems to end.
Lost government laptop computers with thousands of taxpayers' personal information. A $170 million FBI computer system that won't work. Hundreds of mobile homes bought for the Katrina homeless sitting unused in storage lots. A $24 billion Coast Guard rebuilding program riddled with shoddy workmanship. At least 50 criminal investigations now under way into fraud by government contractors in Iraq.
If this parade of incompetence isn't sufficiently outrageous, how about this: The Government Accountability Office finds the Pentagon sold surplus military missile and jet fighter parts that may have found their ways to the "Axis of Evil" Iran.
Even more astonishing: Some parts are for the U.S.-made Navy and Marines F-14 Tomcat jet fighter. Iran, the only foreign nation to be sold the F-14, has been desperate for parts to get its aging F-14s flying.
Then, the unbelievable: After F-14 parts were stopped from reaching Iran when the middleman was arrested, the same parts showed up again as Pentagon surplus and were enroute to Iran a second time.
However, the barn door was closed too late in the case of a California company that sold communist China a windfall of hundreds of containers of components for guide missiles, for bombs, for the B-1 bomber and for underwater mines between 1994 and 1999. The owners weren't caught, convicted and imprisoned until 2000.
The unthinkable is worth thinking: Sloppy Pentagon management and security procedures could allow "surplus" weapons parts to reach Iran and other hostile nations, only to eventually be used against U.S. military forces.
