Pentagon Task Force Spent Nearly $150M on Villas and 3-Star Meals in Afghanistan

[phantom power]

Remember this (along with a million other things) the next time some wingnut or 3rd-way-er starts bloviating about how we just can't afford to pay teachers, or build roads, or pay for a social safety net.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) is asking why a small Department of Defense task force charged with developing the Afghan economy spent nearly $150 million on private villas, security guards and luxury meals while operating in the country between 2010 and 2014.

In a letter to Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter made public Thursday, SIGAR chief John Sopko wrote that members of the Defense Department’s Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO) could have used accommodations available on local military bases and other U.S. government facilities, adding that it was “unclear what benefit the U.S. received as the result of TFBSO’s decision.”

From 2009 until it was disbanded this year, TFBSO was entrusted with rebuilding post-war Afghanistan’s business infrastructure, receiving roughly $766 million from Congress to do so.

Amazingly, former TFBSO employees told SIGAR investigators that the $150 million spent on accommodations in Afghanistan — fully 20 percent of the task force’s total budget — supported “no more than 5 to 10” employees.

https://theintercept.com/2015/12/03/pentagon-task-force-spent-nearly-150m-on-villas-and-3-star-meals-in-afghanistan/

[PeoViejo]

1. It's what the locals expect to see.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj

Anything less would be looked down-upon.

[phantom power]

2. Like Atrios said: "The war was great! Everybody got rich!"

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2015/12/the-war-was-great-everybody-got-rich.html

[sharp_stick]

3. The brass always does pretty well

They try to pretend, at least for the media, that they're all in it together but try to find a general in any hot area that doesn't drive around in air conditioned luxury when the cameras aren't around, not gonna happen.

If you've ever seen Apocalypse Now the most revealing scene in there about brass is when Willard (Martin Sheen) gets his orders from a General, CIA spook and the General's aide (Harrison Ford). They're eating dinner consisting of perfectly cooked steak, shrimp and alcohol in a really nice villa. They casually discuss killing Kurtz but don't even stop chewing.

General Corman is the perfect example of a military General IMO>

[karynnj]

4. The problem is bigger than that -- here is an article that speaks to the fundamental

underlying problems. http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/compass/articles/2015/6/17/john-sopko-sigar.html There has been a huge amount of waste in money spent on Afghanistan. Note in particular the "logic" of we have spent a trillion dollars -- that we "lose" if we were to leave early. The man leading it sounds good and honest -- but, it seems that the US effort has for years been subject to being completely incompetent and having no checks that insured that what we pay for was really done.

Another sobering comment was that the total expenditures of services by Afghanistan is 4 to 5 times higher than the revenue the government takes in. While some of that cost may be fraud and waste, it is not clear that even if they got their act together and everything was clean, that they could afford these basic services on their own.

Excerpt with both points:

We have a trillion-dollar investment [in Afghanistan]. That includes the war fighting, which cost a lot more than the reconstruction. We lost 2,000 Americans, and many more wounded. SIGAR and the other oversight agencies are like insurance polices. We don’t cost that much, but we are the insurance policy for the entire $1 trillion. And if they cut back too much, we could lose it all.

Lose it all — meaning lose Afghanistan?

Lose Afghanistan. The government could collapse. They raise $2 billion a year. It costs $8 [billion] to $10 billion to pay for their military, their police, their schools, highways and all of that.

[roscoeroscoe]

5. While this is happening,

They are talking about closing the commissaries.

This is criminal.

[Initech]

6. Hey Republicans! This is wasteful government spending!!

[Rex]

7. Because no one is really in control of the MIC and it does as it pleases on a 600 billion

a year salary. I don't even know why they bothered to investigate, nothing ever happens and it goes right back to business as usual.

[olddots]

8. the tip of their melting ice berg

the defence department used to be called the war department .