Those Damned Kids

This week brought more distressing news from the war in Iraq.  It seems that the Pentagon has lost track of almost one-third of the weapons given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005.  You don't have to be a Department of Defense security expert to figure out that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting against U.S. troops in Iraq.  According to a report from the Government Accountability Office (if that isn't an oxymoron, I don't know what is), military officials don't know what happened to 190,000 weapons -- 110,000 AK-47 assault rifles and 80,000 pistols.

This isn't the first time the government has "lost track" of something of major importance.  Earlier this spring, a Congressional committee reported that $12 billion in cash was sent to Iraq between May of 2003 and June of 2004 for reconstruction, and they don't know where $8.8 billion is.  Apparently, almost 400 tons of cash was taken from the Federal Reserve in New York, stacked on wooden pallets and loaded into cargo planes that were flown into Baghdad.  There, the cash was literally handed out from the back of pick-up trucks.  I ask you - how do you lose almost 200,000 guns and $8.8 billion in cash?  Now, I'm the first to admit that I lose things all the time.  But I usually end up finding what I've lost, unlike our government. If they took the time to ask me, I could tell them what happened to all of the guns and cash -- those damned kids took them.

It's a running joke in our family when someone loses something, one of us will always say "Those damned kids took it."  Yes, I know there are no kids there at The Compound, but they get blamed, any way.  The story goes back to when my Grandmother went to the nursing home.  Shortly after she went there, a group of kids from a school came to visit the residents there.  A day or two later, Grandma lost something and it happened to be during one of her less lucid moments, so she deducted that a) those kids were there, b) she couldn't find what she was looking for, so c) those kids took it.  Only she told us those damned kids.  I have to honestly say, in the 94 and a half years of her life, that was probably only one of a handful of times that she cussed.  Perodically after that, whenever she couldn't find something, she still said those damned kids took it.  And those kids are still at it.  Why, just a few weeks ago on a Sunday morning, and I passed each other in the hallway as we were getting ready for church.  He couldn't find a pair of slacks.  I looked at him and said "Those damned kids" and he nodded his head in agreement.  Maybe they know where the guns and money are.