Got boned by the US DOS
- Thread starter cancer
- Start date
That last line pretty much covers how that "news" story played out.
Someone was trying to spin up the fact that the paperwork traceability was not up to the supposed standards required.
If you read up on the story, it is not "weapons gone missing" but "failure of accountability paper trail" that the Auditor was reporting upon. Different things. If one third of all the weapons shipped shipped overseas by military units had actually gone missing, it'd be an story, but it ain't.
Looks like a big deal until the details are looked over.
The US is not tracking scopes going to Canada. They are simply stopping them at the border. The customs declaration says "scope" they look, and decide it does not have the proper paperwork, and it goes other than across...
Faaaaaarrrrkkk! I'm surprised they still call themselves the "Land of the Free".
Between guys being paranoid about Liability lawsuits, lawsuits from annoyed neighbors, their own damn government making up new rules at random....Yup. Free alright. As long as you follow all the rules and keep up with te changes, even if they are contradictory...
Any chance of that Eotech ever getting out of the US of A? Ever? Or is the best bet to see if you can arrange to have them sell it and send you the money, so you are not totally done over?
Man, that's brutal!
Trev
The State Dept is not to worried about the most of the scopes [hunting and tactical scopes] crossing the border with proper documentation but they take an interest in Controlled goods leaving the US and the EO Tech model 553 is a controlled good.
That's why I bought the Bushnell Holosight, cheaper and bushnell has a warranty center in Canada. The holosight is made by EoTech does that mean if mine broke would it go to Bushnell and then Eotech or repaired by bushnell here in Canada ?
- Location
- big sky country
Talked to our broker on Friday if your EO-tech was not legally exported from the US [ EO-Tech 553 has been declared a Controlled Item by the US State Dept not for EXPORT] will not release your Eotech 553 they will seize the item.
With our guns or guns in the US? Lets wait and see, Obama has been in office for a month, Bush for 8 years. I am not disagreeing with you but I won't speculate and I will form my own opinion in 4 years at least. I just came back from the US and spoke to several gun distributors and they didn't seem to concerned about it.
- Location
- Kawartha Lakes, Ontario
According to the BBC, the GAO report stated that :
"* US military officials failed to keep proper records on about 87,000 rifles, pistols, mortars and other weapons sent to Afghanistan between December 2004 and June 2008 - about a third of all the weapons sent
* There was a similar lack of management of a further 135,000 light weapons donated to Afghan forces via the US military by 21 countries
* The military failed even to record the serial numbers of some 46,000 weapons, making it impossible to confirm receipt of weapons or identify any which had fallen into the hands of militants
* The serial numbers of 41,000 weapons were recorded, but US military officials still had no idea where they were"
Pretty much a clusterf**k, I'd say. At least 87,000 that they cannot account for.
Which again raises a basic question that's at the very heart of the issue which - unless I missed it - the owner has yet to directly address here ...that is, how did you come into possession of the scope in the first place if it can't be legally exported from the U.S. to a non-military/non-law enforcement end-user?Savage said:
It would seem to me that there's not much point in complaining about an item being seized at the border if you knew - or had good reason to suspect - that you shouldn't have had it in the first place ...regardless of what the repair facility may have told you prior to your shipping it to them (they may have simply assumed that you were an approved end-user).
Yup. Read the same spun up "news" story.
They didn't really think that the Afgans were going to keep the same kind of records that the US (or Canadians) use when issuing all this stuff out, did they. Maybe they did. Surprise! Didn't happen. Oh well.
So they don't know where they are. Yup. If they wanted to know where they are at all times, they could come up with several thousand supply clerks to issue them out and count them again every night. They handed them over to the ANA, though, and the ANA is doing with them, what the ANA does with their kit, in the way that they will, to the satisfaction of the ANA.
Again, it is a spin on a non-story. The guns have not all vanished, the accounting paper trail was not carried out to the GAO's satisfaction.
Not being able to say with certainty that this one or that one was transferred to a particular individual, isn't the same as them all going missing.
They said they have the serial numbers of 41 000 weapond handed over to the ANA. I suppose it would be too much to ask that this refrain from being "news" until large numbers of these serial numbers actually DO show up in the hands of insurgent forces?
Accounting. Process. Crossed "t's" dotted "i's". Not being able to prove something went somewhere, after the fact, using paper, does not mean they went anywhere they did not belong.
Cheers
Trev
- Location
- Kawartha Lakes, Ontario
And we will never know where those arms end up, because someone couldn't be bothered to do some basic paperwork. The US simply doesn't know where those arms went. Pathetic.
When supplying arms to a government that is widely acknowledged to be corrupt, some slight due diligence would be expected.
The US also lost track of at least $9 billion in Iraq and squandered God knows how much more.
No matter how blase you choose to be, this is a cockup, and harms the mission politically and in terms of public credibility. Heads should roll.
And I remain astonished at the hypocrisy in expending huge efforts to control widely available technology going to allied countries while dropping the ball bigtime in environments where the "goods" can show up and kill your own troops.
I purchased the 553 on the EE here on CGN, frankly there have been quite a few 553s up for sale there and nobody states in their ads that "You must be LEO/Mil to buy this, or you will be in violation of US DOS export laws". The guy I got it from said it was sold to him by someone in the military, so that's how it got onto CGN.
Look, nobody at Police Ordnance, Eotech or the US DOS has even asked where this optic came from, or even asked if I'm LEO/Mil. This is why I'm saying that Eotech appears to be having export problems on a large scale and not on a "let's let the US DOS screw this guy because we think he's a moron" scale.
Thank heaven for the United States of America. They have taken the heat off we Germans in regards to ludicrous and draconian security policy. "Your papers please."
See, that's the problem. You seem to beleive that, because they cannot produce paper that says so, that the weapons didn''t actually go to the ANA.
Like it or not, the ANA runs the ANA. Fouled up. Probably. Better than the alternative? Yep. They tried the alternative. They are fighting with it now.
Pathetic. Not so much.
Cocked up paperwork is a fact of life in a high turnover situation like the logistics ops going into any warzone. Different personell, different units, different methodoligies used for filing away info that is supposedly all according to the same set of books.
That's why I am not so concerned about the paper trail. They know where the guns went. They cannot (or in some cases, like as not, will not) produce paper to that effect.
Due diligence? Really? What were you expecting? That they would first institute a requirement for everyone in the ANA to take a course, get a registration certificate, and report their address every time they moved? How's it working out on this side of the water?
After the amount of arms they normally dump into the happy hands of erstwhile "allies" over the years (read up on OBL, and his supply of Stinger missiles), a "failure" of the accounting practices is not even a bit newsworthy, unless you are trying to spin it up to make a story look like it should mean something.
What goes on inside the heads of the paranoid relics that are now in a position to make policy in their jurisdictions within the US, is a whole different thing. Different departments, playing their little games for power and importance.
Were we, as Canadians, either powerful, or important, as trading partners, there would very likely be a different outlook on the whole thing from the US side of the line. We are not, however. Not we, the consumers, in any case. Instead we get to deal with the aforementioned policy makers who are playing their games for their own reasons of domain, and well, we lose. Not a large enough sales market to justify the screams of outrage from the manufacturers that might cause the whole policy to be reviewed.
Nor large enough a market to justify, in many cases, even going through the bother of the paperwork, let alone the fees, to export to.
So the short answer is, in the end, the story about the GAO and weapons shipped to A'Stan/Iraq, have butt nothing to do with State Department policy and Dept of Commerce policies that control commercial export of goods. One affects us, the Canadian Consumer, the other is just a spun up story trying to make the US Government look poorly, by reporting on the process by which the system attempts to improve upon itself.
Cheers
Trev
Mystic Precision
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Summerland, BC
Jumping in on page 4 of this thread but couldn't help seeing all manner of 'lost' merchandise. Could be a huge security risk.
Someone much wiser then me mentioned that we, Canadians, ought to look at services and tech to sell to the world as a way to help rebuild our economy.
Shouldn't Harper, while in the US this week, offer to contract out our firearm registration program to the US military?
Afterall, it does work and keeps track of all manner of stuff. We have already done the infrastructure and R&D investment.
Now let's export it and generate some revenue....to help bail out some other industry.
Jerry
Someone much wiser then me mentioned that we, Canadians, ought to look at services and tech to sell to the world as a way to help rebuild our economy.
Shouldn't Harper, while in the US this week, offer to contract out our firearm registration program to the US military?
Afterall, it does work and keeps track of all manner of stuff. We have already done the infrastructure and R&D investment.
Now let's export it and generate some revenue....to help bail out some other industry.
Jerry
this has little to do with the topic at hand
