PART I - British soldiers killed with US weapons

Reuters on News.com.au has this story:

SEVEN British soldiers shot dead in Iraq this year were probably killed by the same sniper using the same US-made weapon, a British coroner said today.

The coroner, David Masters, was speaking a day after recording a verdict of unlawful killing in the death of Rodney Wilson, a British soldier shot by insurgents while on patrol in the southern Iraqi city of Basra in June.

Mr Masters said evidence given during Wilson's inquest showed that six other British soldiers killed in the three months before Masters were more than likely Killed by the same sniper using the same weapon.

"In terms of the markings on the fragments found, an expert forensic scientist concluded that they were fired from the same weapon," Mr Masters said.

The weapon was probably an M16 or an M4 Carbine, both high-powered US-made assault rifles, he said.

The fact that the fatal bullets were probably fired from an American weapon is notable, as the vast majority of insurgents in Iraq use Russian-designed AK-47 rifles.

Insurgent snipers have often attacked US and British troops operating in Iraq, though it is not believed that a single sniper has previously shot as many as seven soldiers, whether British or American.

The forensic expert told the inquest that the weapon had not killed or wounded any British troops since Wilson's death, the coroner said.

At least 174 British troops have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. In that time, 3896 US troops have died, as have 134 servicemen from other nations fighting as part of the US-led coalition.

And now for something completely different -- a little history -

In the Reagan-Bush (GHW - "Poppy") years, there was IranContra. IranContra (1986) involved a secret US-Israeli-Iran weapons pipeline, which involved weapons for Nicaraguan rebels called "Contras", and cocaine. Even before that, NATO weaponry was run through Portugal & Israel to Iran (before, during & after the Islamic Revolution), and Portuguese Defense Minister Armand de Costa was assassinated in 1980 immediately after he went public with his condemnation over it.

George W. Bush prohibited the declassification of records from the Reagan-Bush years immediately upon his election in 2001. See Robert Parry's The Bushes and the Truth About Iran. See also George Washington University's National Security Archives for the history of cocaine, the Contras and covert operations. See Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" series.