Iraq goes tac-air shopping elsewhere

Iraq is being lost for a bunch of reasons, but here is a new one to trial...

Maliki, in an interview with BBC Arabic yesterday, blamed the U.S.’s “long, very slow way” for delaying the delivery of 36 aircraft. “We shouldn’t have just bought U.S. jets, we should have bought British, French and Russian jets to provide air support. If we had air support, none of this would have happened,” he said, according to excerpts e-mailed by the BBC.

The U.S is delivering the first F-16 aircraft “as quickly as possible” and has said all along that they’ll be handed over in the fall, Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters in Washington yesterday. He also said that the remaining 200 of 500 Hellfire missiles approved for delivery to Iraq will be sent in the coming weeks.