I suppose it just wasn’t enough that our allies, “the rebels” in Syria, have significant Al-Qaeda elements to them. No, we are the USA! USA! Best country ever. Defender of human rights. City on a hill. We must do far more than that. So we did.
This story below from Bloomberg, highlights a 236-page report by the U.S. Army Suspension and Debarment Office, which shows that military contracts have been granted to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Yep, this is exactly what happens when an empire gets too big, too corrupt, and ends up in the hands of a bunch of sociopaths. From Bloomberg:
Supporters of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan have been getting U.S. military contracts, and American officials are citing “due process rights” as a reason not to cancel the agreements, according to an independent agency monitoring spending.
“I am deeply troubled that the U.S. military can pursue, attack, and even kill terrorists and their supporters, but that some in the U.S. government believe we cannot prevent these same people from receiving a government contract,” Sopko said.
The 236-page report and Sopko’s summary provide one of the watchdog agency’s most critical appraisals of U.S. performance in helping to build a stable Afghanistan as the Pentagon prepares to withdraw combat troops by the end of next year.
The U.S. has 60,000 troops in Afghanistan, with plans to reduce the number to 34,000 by February. President Barack Obama hasn’t decided how many to keep in the country after 2014 to train Afghan forces and engage in anti-terrorist missions.
“Anti-terrorist missions.” Like what, rewarding them lucrative contracts?
An audit showed that after 16 months, none of the agency’s essential program objectives have been reached and the money spent has mostly financed workshops and training sessions. The project is aimed at bolstering Afghanistan’s government before troop withdrawals planned for next year.
“It’s troubling that after 16 months, this program has not issued its first community grant,” Sopko said. “Rather, it has spent almost $50 million, about a quarter of the total program budget, on conferences, overhead and workshops.”
Regarding the 43 cases of contractors with militant connections, Sopko said the Army should “enforce the rule of common sense” in its suspension and debarment program. “They may be enemies of the United States but that is not enough to keep them from getting government contracts,” according to the agency’s report.
Someone’s definitely lining their pockets…and it’s not just the “terrorists.”
Full article here.
In Liberty,
Mike
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BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARF
Good God, you couldn’t make this crap up. Not even the Onion.
Since we are awarding them contracts, why not bring them over here on work visas and give them TSA jobs so they can frisk all of us going through the airports looking for other Al Qaeda. In other news . . .
It reminds me of that scene in Catch-22 where the character Milo collects money from the Luftwaffe and pays the Air Force to bomb its own base on the premise that they can do the job quicker and more cheaply.
Seriously, what’s the plan here? Make the Taliban rich, fat, and lazy so that they’ll leave us alone?
There is nothing new about this–we’ve been doing it for years. For example, it’s been over a decade since we awarded Al Qaeda the demolition contract for two buildings in NYC.
Why not? The jerk jobs idea is to provide the Hoggies with $ 700 million dollars worth of Russian helicopters on our way out the door. Stimulus sense would at least dictate that the Helios be manufactured by US companies in the US. Go figure, or is the reality just to freakin’ frightening to think through. Remember Benghazi and wonder why in the hell couldn’t those SOG handlers command that at least one of those overhead worthless drones that instead watched those boys, Glen & Ty, die in real time over that machine gun crash a drone into the mortar site that eventually killed our guys? Real sick shit to deliberately sacrifice those brave and honorable guys after they risked their lives earlier to successfully save their brothers at the temporary mission by eliminating many militia faction attackers. Their handlers told them to “stand down” and let the US mission workers rot, but their honor and duty would not allow them to shirk their additional duty to find and try to protect CIA Stevens who unwisely went off earlier by himself to a clandestine meeting with a militant faction meeting that literally cost him his ass. Gold Medal for valor and honor for Glen and Ty. Contact your Federal senators and representatives and get behind this for their surviving relatives – Ace.
In the US, anyone supporting “associated forces” can be arrested, detained, and interrogated indefinitely.
But in Afghanistan, a.k.a Opiumstan, “associated forces” supporters get taxpayers’ money.
Unbelievable. Gov hates us for our few remaining freedoms, and it shows.
Useful information ..I am very happy to read this article..thanks for giving us this useful information.
Fantastic walk-through. I appreciate this post. Sgt David Hack Blog.com
What is “due process rights”??? Congress needs to explain to us Americans, they work for us, not the other way around.
Casey, get a grip,uranium dependent? Were not mining the stuff, because we have so much now, we can’t figure out where to store it. What do you think, was in those thousands of decommissioned thermonuclear weapons, bubble gum? Of course, we want evey scrap in our hands, all that is attainable , better to purchase, than inherit it, for free, postage paid! Wake up and stroll in the real world, it’s scary plenty, without simpletons making stupidity up at will.
This is certainly no surprise to me. It has been clear for a long time that the effort in the middle east was to SUPPORT and assist the Taliban and Al Khaida and other Muslimist groups, and to undermine the military. It should be obvious to everyone that the effectiveness of the military has declined so radically during the Obama administration that this must be the case. Our involvement after Afghanistan was unconscionable on any other basis; certainly the military would have cautioned against it at every level until more facts were known, IF this were not the case. Beyond this, nothing we have done since Obama entered Afghanistan can be explained in any other way; none of our involvement made any sense on the basis of American interests, unless they had been radically redefined in secret.