Yes John...

The Gaza Bombshell is a bombshell.

And so many smelly undercurrents... Often one could ask how does su much weaponry gets into the hands of undesirable people... Weaponry often delivered by governments via arms dealers...

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March 7, 2008
Major Arms Dealer Arrested in Thailand
By SETH MYDANS and RAYMOND BONNER

BANGKOK — One of the world’s most notorious arms dealers, suspected of supplying weapons to the Taliban and Al Qaeda and of pouring huge arms shipments into Africa’s civil wars with his own private air fleet, was arrested by Thai authorities in a hotel here on Thursday. His capture was prompted by a tipoff from the United States in connection with the procurement of weapons for the Colombian FARC rebels.

The Justice Department said that federal prosecutors in New York would unseal criminal charges against the arms dealer, Viktor Bout, 41, and one of his associates later Thursday, charging them with conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Such a step would mean that American prosecutors think Mr. Bout would probably be brought to the United States to stand trial.

Mr. Bout, who is wanted by the police in many countries, is a former Soviet Air Force officer. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, he built a network of air cargo companies in the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and the United States, according to the United States Treasury.

United Nations reports and other investigations have concluded that Mr. Bout may have run the world’s largest arms-smuggling network. Peter Hain, a former British minister for Europe, who investigated the arms-for-diamonds trade, called him “Africa’s chief merchant of death.”

In 2005, Mr. Bout was described by Amnesty International as “the most prominent foreign businessman” involved in trafficking arms to nations that are embargoed by the United Nations. Mr. Bout, who also goes by the first names Victor and Vic, was said to be the inspiration for the film “Lord of War,” starring Nicolas Cage, about an unscrupulous arms trafficker.

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On that, he was technically correct. He was different from a drug pusher in one crucial way: what he was doing might be repugnant and contributing to savagery, but it didn't necessarily make him a criminal. There is simply not a lot of law -- American, international or otherwise -- on arms trafficking. Since the mid-1990's, not one U.N. arms embargo has resulted in the conviction of an arms trafficker. The U.N. has no power to arrest. Interpol depends on the cooperation of local authorities. Astonishingly, despite having the toughest arms-trafficking laws in the world, the U.S. has not prosecuted a single case of arms trafficking. This is true partly by design. ''Governments create rules that allow arms deals to happen,'' said Lisa Misol, an arms researcher for Human Rights Watch. ''And traffickers rely on the fact that countries don't consider arms shipments originating somewhere else their problem.''

In other words, the most repugnant kind of commerce is usually not illegal. And if arms trafficking is not illegal, how can it be stopped? Why should it be stopped? When confronted by images of child soldiers in Liberia, the question seems naive, if not specious. But when it comes to weapons sales, the notion of ''national interest'' becomes a hall of mirrors. The top arms manufacturers -- and the U.S. sells more weapons than the rest of the world combined -- have a vested interest in keeping their product on the move, legally or otherwise. And aren't there also simply times when a government decides it's in its best interest, and its citizens' best interest, to let traffickers traffic? Governments are reluctant to restrain arms traffickers who might serve their own geopolitical or national-security interests in the future. ''It's the disposal problem,'' said Jonathan Winer. ''What do you do with people after you've trained them to be killers, traffickers, smugglers and criminals in the cause of a just war? Ask Manuel Noriega. He'd know.''

In Africa, by all accounts, Bout sold and delivered to anyone who could pay. But Afghanistan was different. He said that he helped arm only the Rabbani government, which was then clinging to power. ''I took sides because I knew what the Taliban was,'' Bout told me. ''Rabbani and Massoud were the only hope. I had a major pact with the Rabbani government. We sustained them. My aircraft was the last one out of Bagram air base before the Taliban came.'' In the mid-1990's, he flew four shipments a day into government-controlled Jalalabad, he said: weapons (probably from the former Soviet republics) and TV's and radios from Dubai.

In August 1995, 13 months before the Taliban took Kabul, Taliban aircraft intercepted one of Bout's Sharjah-based planes loaded with ammunition for the government. The MIG's forced the plane down in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. What happened next has become arms-trafficking folk lore. The plane and its cargo were seized, and the crew of seven imprisoned at the airport for over a year. Eventually, the story goes, the crew members overpowered their captors, started up Bout's plane, took off under heavy fire and escaped back to Sharjah.

Bout tells a different story about the escape. He flew to Kandahar a few times over the course of that year to negotiate his crew's release, he told me, but not alone. He was accompanied by officials from the Russian government. The negotiations failed. (The story up to this point has been reported.) The reality of the plane's escape, he went on, is more interesting than the lore and more politically fraught. ''Do you really think you can jump in a plane that's been sitting unmaintained on the tarmac for over a year, start up the engines and just take off?'' He paused. ''They didn't escape. They were extracted.''

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