U.S. risks wasting $12 billion in Afghan army aid: report

[unhappycamper]

U.S. risks wasting $12 billion in Afghan army aid: report
WASHINGTON | Wed Jan 26, 2011 6:08pm EST

(Reuters) - The United States risks squandering more than $11 billion if it does not come up with adequate plans for building and maintaining facilities for Afghanistan's growing security forces, a U.S. watchdog said.

A new audit released on Wednesday by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, or SIGAR, said U.S. officials working to build up local police and soldiers, a key task in ensuring Afghanistan does not succumb to the Taliban when foreign forces withdraw, had failed to provide long-term construction plans for some 900 local security facilities.

The watchdog began its probe when other investigations revealed that the U.S. component of the NATO training mission in Afghanistan was unable to produce planning documents "describing the size, location or use of Afghan National Security Force facilities, such as Afghan National Army garrisons."

The audit said the absence of comprehensive, long-term plans could result in serious waste since the United States is expected to pour funds into training and equipping Afghan forces for years.

Auditors recommended that U.S. commanders develop long-term maintenance and building plans and an updated framework that could reflect what may be a larger force of Afghan soldiers and police than originally expected, possibly 400,000 strong.

[gratuitous]

1. Maybe another surge?

Sounds like we need to shoot and bomb a whole lot more people if this money isn't going to be wasted.

[WinkyDink]

2. "risks"?? Like the waste isn't a SURE THING?! Graft, corruption, thievery: That's all these "wars"

are and have been about.
So some peasnats die; what of it?

[Starry Messenger]

3. But I bet the officials aren't getting their "value added" stats published in

the paper like teachers, with their names. You know, the group we *aren't* allowed to "throw money at".

[FormerDittoHead]

4. Note: the military doesn't care. They just want more money, please. How stupid are we?

They must think we're a bunch of fucking idiots for not realizing how much these stories of "waste" are really schemes where people are making a lot of money by skimming.

Like that 600 million that went COMPLETELY unaccounted for. If you don't think that a GOOD portion of that wasn't skimmed off (I'm talking most of it) and put in someone's pocket, you're an IDIOT.

Support our troops. Fuck that. Somewhere there are guys waving that flag who are stealing more from the gov't than any person on welfare, food stamps or unemployment ever did.

Same with this. Everyone in Congress is an IDIOT who isn't jumping up and down threatening to slash the military by 50% THIS YEAR unless they can account for these things.

If my tax return is off by a DOLLAR, they will catch it, and account for it....

>U.S. officials working to build up local police and soldiers, a key task in ensuring Afghanistan does not succumb to the Taliban when foreign forces withdraw, had failed to.

HOW MANY YEARS have we been in Afghanistan? YEARS. Are YOU stupid enough to believe that after SEVEN YEARS we're just getting this thing together? I thought Iraq was a joke with how long it took to "train the locals" but this is a test - ARE YOU THAT STUPID?

Anyone who thinks this lack of planning, etc is some kind of accident is an IDIOT. They don't have plans because they don't WANT THEM. That's not the POINT. The point is getting more and more money so someone can skim it off and WE pay the bill.

We're like we're in one of those college experiments that they'll read about in the future - "The effects of "supporting our troops" in making people spending a LOT of money over something they really don't care about or even know isn't quite right.."

[Gravel Democrat]

5. a few billion here and a few billion there and pretty soon you have...

a trillion dollars...




Notice those pallets are double stacked.
...and remember those are $100 bills.
And that red thing on the left is a person to scale.

Also notice that this is insane, and your childrens children are being stolen from.

http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html