The Washington Times is reporting that China has been caught by the Pentagon shipping large amounts of small arms and more advanced weapons to Iran and Syria, removing the serial numbers and then selling (or facilitating the transfer of) these weapons to insurgent groups in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In some cases the weapons have been flown directly from the factories inside China (which are almost exclusively state-owned) to Taliban groups inside Afghanistan with no help from the Iranians.

Some arms were sent by aircraft directly from Chinese factories to Afghanistan and included large-caliber sniper rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and components for roadside bombs, as well as other small arms. [empahsis added]

So just what is President Bush going to do to stop this latest outrage?

U.S. government appeals to China to check some of the arms shipments in advance were met with stonewalling by Beijing, which insisted it knew nothing about the shipments and asked for additional intelligence on the transfers. The ploy has been used in the past by China to hide its arms-proliferation activities from the United States, according to U.S. officials with access to the intelligence reports.

Impressive, read on.

The Bush administration has been trying to hide or downplay the intelligence reports to protect its pro-business policies toward China, and to continue to claim that China is helping the United States in the war on terrorism. U.S. officials have openly criticized Iran for the arms transfers but so far there has been no mention that China is a main supplier.

You really had to be drinking the WH kool-aid to believe that China was ever truly helping the United States in the “War on Terror”. I can’t take George Bush seriously when he talks about the “War on Terror” simply because he has allowed politics to infect every aspect of its prosecution. When we make even the slightest effort to stop the flood of arms from China, Syria and Iran into our warzones then maybe we can talk about actually winning this thing, until then it is all just hot air.

Of course we couldn’t stop our “friend” Austria from shipping arms to our enemies, why should we bother trying to stop our enemies?

In this same article is a nice blurb on a story that has been thrown by the wayside.

U.S. intelligence agencies think North Korea is continuing development of nuclear weapons, as well as working on “miniaturization” of weapons for missile warheads, according to a senior Bush administration official.
Since the February nuclear accord reached in Beijing, North Korea has continued work on weapons, said a senior Bush administration official involved in North Korean affairs.
“There are no indications that they are not pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, to include the weaponization and miniaturization,” the official said.

. . .

“Those who are looking at the six-party process and where we are today with [the Banco Delta Asia funds transfer] are very disappointed,” the senior official said. “This doesn’t build confidence. This is a time that is very tense and we want to go to implementing the 13 February agreement. So even though this is a normal exercises, I think there is an element of disappointment that North Korea would move in that direction.”

Do ya think so? BTW, the Banco Delta Asia funds that he is refering to were returned to North Korea recently. Why did the US government return $15 million to North Korea? Good question.