America has lost Iraq.

Not necessarily in a helicopters-taking-off-from-the-embassy way (though that scenario seems to be proceeding apace) but in the more prosaic now-where-did-I-put-my-car-keys sense.

First the famous WMDs proved to be less about slam dunking and more about wild goose chasing.

Then investigators revealed that a staggering $US9 billion in money intended for reconstruction had, like, totally vanished. As The Guardian reported:

The auditors found that the [Coalition Provisional Authority] didn’t keep accounts of the hundreds of millions of dollars of cash in its vault, had awarded contracts worth billions of dollars to American firms without tender, and had no idea what was happening to the money from the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which was being spent by the interim Iraqi government ministries.

Now we learn that the Americans can’t account for a trifling 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols, 125,000 pieces of body armour and 115,000 helmets.

Oops!

A clerical error, General Petraeus (the military genius leading the current ‘surge’) helpfully explains. The Washington Post, like many US papers, expressed a certain understandable exasperation.

“Experts worry,” it reports, “that many of those weapons could have fallen into the hands of enemies in Iraq.”

Ya think?

Bear the tale of the missing munitions in mind next time you hear accusations about Iran arming insurgents. Much as the neo-cons would like to pin the current carnage on the evil machinations of the Islamototalitarofascists in Tehran, every credible observer acknowledges that the vast majority of those fighting the occupation are Iraqis. And it’s now clear why they have no trouble finding weapons.

Indeed, like the famous Commodore Perry, the Americans can say: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”

Or at least their guns are.