House Republicans sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday, asking for a briefing about how closely the Department of Defense is monitoring the flow of U.S. weaponry to Hamas and used in their terrorist onslaught against key ally Israel, the Washington Examiner reported.
In the letter, authored by House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., they ask Austin to appear on Capitol Hill next Monday amid reports that U.S. arms are making their way into the hands of terrorists from Afghanistan and the battlefields in Ukraine.
“The Committee has seen reports that U.S.-manufactured weapons are being redistributed and resold in secondary markets to terrorist organizations, including Hamas,” Comer and Greene wrote, according to the Examiner.
The pair are requesting a briefing on DOD “procedures for preventing, addressing, and mitigating weapon diversion abroad,” according to the letter, the Examiner reported.
Israel Defense Forces posted a photo of an M-16 — on Oct. 5, two days before the terrorist attack — that Hamas terrorists were using to shoot at IDF personnel before IDF “neutralized” them.
Further, a Ukraine defense official said weeks ago that Russia was supplying Hamas with U.S. trophy weapons, confiscated from battles with Ukrainian forces, as a way to discredit Ukraine in the eyes of its western allies.
MTG herself posted Oct. 8 that the U.S. needs to “work with Israel to track serial numbers on any U.S. weapons used by Hamas against Israel,” rhetorically asking if the weaponry came from Ukraine or Afghanistan.
“Highly likely the answer is both,” she posted to X.
According to a Pentagon report, the U.S. left behind $7.12 billion in military equipment in what was heavily criticized as Biden’s hurried, blundered and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. The U.S. bequeathed it to Afghan National Defense and Security Forces in a country controlled by the Taliban, turning that terrorist organization into arms dealers.
Fast forward to now, the U.S has provided Ukraine with more than $45 billion in military assistance alone since the Russian invasion began, and House Republicans have no appetite for repeating the sins of Afghanistan.
“The U.S. Government remains keenly aware of the risk of possible illicit diversion, and is proactively taking steps to mitigate this risk in close cooperation with the government of Ukraine,” the State Department told Newsweek in June. “We are sending weapons to help Ukraine defend itself in an active conflict, and realistically must acknowledge that there is a risk these weapons could be captured if territory changes hands, as can happens in any war.”
According to their letter, Comer and MTG want to know what those mitigation steps are.
