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Also related, Vice has been covering this for awhile now and had a great piece on HBO (er, well-produced piece). Another example of the horrible spending: contr

Also related, Vice has been covering this for awhile now and had a great piece on HBO (er, well-produced piece). Another example of the horrible spending: contractors spent $300 million to build a power plant to power Kabul, but this plant is not being used because the cost to run the plant is too expensive...so they import electricity from Kazakhstan and China (4:00 mark)[0]. We also purchased $700 million of new Russian airplanes and helicopters for the Afghan Air Force that they can't fly (7:20 mark)[0]. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CvWJVtEkUE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CvWJVtEkUE [1]https://news.vice.com/article/the-us-just-cant-stop-blowing-billions-in-afghanistan https://news.vice.com/article/the-us-just-cant-stop-blowing-... [2]https://news.vice.com/article/us-aid-to-afghanistan-has-largely-been-wasted-and-stolen-report-says https://news.vice.com/article/us-aid-to-afghanistan-has-larg...

zdean 11y ago
This has been standard practice for projects in Afghanistan since the start of the war. It unfolds something like this: U.S. gov'nt wants a new well built in some remote village and ask for bids. Western companies bid and win the contract...let's say for $10,000 (not an unrealistic number). The western company sub's out the project to a local company...usually a joint western/local setup for let's say $1000. The sub sub's it out to some local team for let's say $100. The local team hires some guy to go to the next village over and take a picture of an existing well for $10 as proof that the well was built and submits that picture all the way up the line of contractors. The western gov'nt accepts this as proof b/c no one wants to go out into the "hostile" villages to see if the well was actually built. This has been going on for nearly 15 years now on projects small and grand. It's common knowledge among anyone from there, with relatives there, who has worked there, etc. The information is not new or hard to uncover. It is simply not news worthy in western media.
- srinivas77 11y ago
  so, 95% of the money eventually gets to western companies?
- pkaeding 11y ago
  After reading Confessions of an Economic Hit Man[1], by John Perkins, it sounds like this has been standard practice since at least the cold war. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit...
rdtsc 11y ago
That is _why_ we are "fighting" there, really. It is mostly about handouts to military contractors. Not just tanks, but also logistics (charging the Army $80 for a load of laundry), side projects like gas stations, power stations etc. The bombing, killing and propaganda surrounding it is just there as an excuse to transfer many hundreds of billions of dollars from tax payers to a select group of companies.
- joering2 11y ago
  Absolutely, but it's interesting to see the shift in interest at the top of the mountain, so to speak. Bush's true accomplishment was destroyal of Iraq for two reasons: most of his buddies are war-enterprise contractors, such as Lockheed, Boeing, Halliburton, etc. So immorally but legally the entire Iraq war regime was a smart transfer of wealth from taxpayers to those few friends of Bushes. Another reason was so that Bush family (and friends) can keep the price of oil here in US at decent levels (to the contrary what public assumed was that US wants to take over Iraq oil fields. No reason to do so -- plenty of oil here inside USA). Now fast forward to Obama and you can clearly see Obama is not friends with war contractors. His buddies are mostly in healthcare business and it's as big, or even bigger than war, cause you can run war only X amount of years. Healthcare is forever. Hence Obama is mostly interested in deals related to screwing healthcare, and not interested in deploying US military into ongoing wars. Better spend tax payers money for rich friends from Pharma and Co.

zdean 11y ago

This has been standard practice for projects in Afghanistan since the start of the war. It unfolds something like this: U.S. gov'nt wants a new well built in some remote village and ask for bids. Western companies bid and win the contract...let's say for $10,000 (not an unrealistic number). The western company sub's out the project to a local company...usually a joint western/local setup for let's say $1000. The sub sub's it out to some local team for let's say $100. The local team hires some guy to go to the next village over and take a picture of an existing well for $10 as proof that the well was built and submits that picture all the way up the line of contractors. The western gov'nt accepts this as proof b/c no one wants to go out into the "hostile" villages to see if the well was actually built. This has been going on for nearly 15 years now on projects small and grand. It's common knowledge among anyone from there, with relatives there, who has worked there, etc. The information is not new or hard to uncover. It is simply not news worthy in western media.

srinivas77 11y ago
so, 95% of the money eventually gets to western companies?
pkaeding 11y ago
After reading Confessions of an Economic Hit Man[1], by John Perkins, it sounds like this has been standard practice since at least the cold war. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit...

rdtsc 11y ago

That is _why_ we are "fighting" there, really. It is mostly about handouts to military contractors. Not just tanks, but also logistics (charging the Army $80 for a load of laundry), side projects like gas stations, power stations etc. The bombing, killing and propaganda surrounding it is just there as an excuse to transfer many hundreds of billions of dollars from tax payers to a select group of companies.

joering2 11y ago
Absolutely, but it's interesting to see the shift in interest at the top of the mountain, so to speak. Bush's true accomplishment was destroyal of Iraq for two reasons: most of his buddies are war-enterprise contractors, such as Lockheed, Boeing, Halliburton, etc. So immorally but legally the entire Iraq war regime was a smart transfer of wealth from taxpayers to those few friends of Bushes. Another reason was so that Bush family (and friends) can keep the price of oil here in US at decent levels (to the contrary what public assumed was that US wants to take over Iraq oil fields. No reason to do so -- plenty of oil here inside USA). Now fast forward to Obama and you can clearly see Obama is not friends with war contractors. His buddies are mostly in healthcare business and it's as big, or even bigger than war, cause you can run war only X amount of years. Healthcare is forever. Hence Obama is mostly interested in deals related to screwing healthcare, and not interested in deploying US military into ongoing wars. Better spend tax payers money for rich friends from Pharma and Co.