South Park will be spoofing a real life incident in an episode in which the show’s ultra-conservative Eric Cartman goes to Afghanistan in order to sign out 500 AK-47 assault rifles from a U.S. weapons bunker. In the clip, Eric Cartman asks the guard on desk duty for 500 AK-47′s. The guard says that Eric will have to sign for them, to which he replies “not a problem.”

The frightening thing about this scene is that it’s something that actually happened. In September of 2008, employees of the mercenary private security corporation Blackwater, notorious for it’s involvement in the Iraq War as a contractor for the United States government, walked into a U.S. weapons bunker and signed for a shipment using the pseudonym of the South Park cartoon character. To date, Blackwater has yet to return the guns to the U.S. military.

The shadowy military contractor has been involved in numerous controversies, some involving weapons. In November of 2008, the U.S. State Department issued a multi-million-dollar fine to Blackwater for shipping hundreds of automatic weapons to Iraq without the proper permits. The weapons are believed to have ended up on the black market, and may have been used against U.S. troops.

On one of two suspected occasions that Blackwater visited the American weapons bunker, Chief Warrant Officer Greg Sailer, signed over more than 200 AK-47s to an individual identified as “Eric Cartman”. The company invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination when approached by the Senate Armed Services Committee to explain the incident.

It should be interesting to finally see the untold true story on Comedy Central.