If I'm remembering correctly (and I won't swear that I am), the Bush administration removed that function from the GAO at the beginning of the Iraq 'action' for many of the same reasons that he moved FEMA under the Homeland Security Agency. Stupidity, ignorance, payback.

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>>The article:
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>>http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle
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>Like I've said before, the term "House Oversight Committee" is ambiguous. Why didn't they notice this debacle? Due to an oversight.
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>I was astounded to read that:
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> “The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq. The author of the report from the Government Accountability Office says U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops.”
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>http://www.reflectivepundit.com/reflectivepundit/2007/08/are-us-supplied.html
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>What? They've never heard of an armourer? Someone who keeps arms under lock and key, and distributes them in a recorded manner?
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>This is on top of the billions of $$ cash that was noticed as having disappeared, with no account or audit, earier this year.
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>I can understand not being able to account for, say, sacks of flour, or bottles of water, when thrown off a lorry to a starving, thirsty mod, in a drought-famine situation, but this is very different.
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>Madre de Dios!