The U.S. military lost 190,000 weapons in Iraq

Last October, a weapons audit requested by U.S. Sen. John Warner of Virginia found that the Pentagon had not properly tracked the weapons that U.S. forces were handing out to Iraqi security forces as part of the train-and-equip program. At least 14,000 weapons were simply absent from DoD's inventory books. Hundreds of thousands of additional serial numbers weren't recorded, making tracking that much more difficult. 

But according to a Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday, the number of missing weapons unaccounted for in Iraq is far higher—about 190,000. Based on an analysis of DoD property logs, the reported concludes:

DOD and MNF-I cannot fully account for about 110,000 AK-47 rifles, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armor, and 115,000 helmets reported as issued to Iraqi forces as of September 22, 2005. 

There's still no real accounting system in place to record which Iraqi units got weapons, how many weapons they got, and when they got them. More effort has been devoted over the past year to developing a reliable database, but since 2004 and 2005 were the big train-and-equip years, the damage has already been done. 

True, these weapons were being distributed in a chaotic security environment, where the clear priority was simply to develop adequate Iraqi forces. But 190,000 weapons missing in action is pretty bad, even by the standards of Iraq.