The Pentagon Scrapped $500 Million Worth of Afghan Planes for Pennies on the Dollar

[tay]

After spending nearly half a billion dollars on 20 planes to outfit the Afghan Air Force, the Defense Department turned around and scrapped 16 of the aircraft for 6 cents on the pound—just $32,000, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has learned.


SIGAR determined that the aircraft flew only 234 hours out of 4,500 required from January through September 2012.


In a pointed letter to Air Force Secretary Deborah James, John Sopko requested all documentation surrounding the decision to scrap the planes along with an explanation. Specifically, he wants to know why the planes weren’t flown out of the country to be sold elsewhere and what steps the department took to obtain a refund.


What’s more, Sopko wants to know the end use of the scrap metal sold to an Afghan company and the ultimate fate of parts that weren’t scrapped, such as engines and brass components. In a country where such materials often end up as components in weapons used against U.S. troops, the answers could prove deeply troubling to U.S. and Afghan officials.



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The remaining four aircraft of the original 20 are at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. In a separate letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Sopko requested advance notice before the remaining planes are moved or destroyed




The Pentagon Scrapped $500 Million Worth of Afghan Planes for Pennies on the Dollar - Defense One

 

[gopher]

With every new military adventure overseas, it's time to kiss your tax money good bye. Hopefully, people will finally awaken to this truth and demand that the US withdraw from these profit seeking policies.

 

[BaalsTears]

President Ebola just signed a Status of Forces Agreement to keep ten thousand US soldiers in Afghanistan forever. Way to go Hussein!

 

[damngrumpy]

The problem is we want to apply the wasteful standard on the present administration
when its gone on for decades.
My father told me when the war ended surplus material from uniforms to paint to jeeps
and other material of every shape and size were placed on vessels taken out to sea
and dumped with the assistance of a bulldozer He said if he hadn't seen it with his own
eyes he would never have believed it.
Only now is the truth coming out about a lot of things and some of our most notable
hero's are as guilty has hell along with the present scoundrels

 

[gopher]

True, some delusionals want to blame the current administration but the more clear thinking people know it's been going on for a long time.


War Profiteering in Iraq.






When perfectly conservative sources like the Financial Times of London point to the shameless war profiteering in a particular conflict, one sits up and takes notice. The analysis done by FT estimates that the US alone spent about $138 billion with roughly $72 billion, more than half the total, going to the top ten contractors of whom eight were American. And the article's author cautions that these figures are probably very low estimates since, many contractors operate under a variety of names to avoid scrutiny. One of my first thoughts was that this was yet another nail in the coffin of those that believed that the Iraq war was fought to ensure world peace, or for "freedom" or even for the security of our regional allies like Israel and others.

The Iraq War was so obviously about war profiteering and oil that it seems amazing that anyone can still believe that it was chiefly about such things as regional or global security ... The fact that money and war profiteering opportunities was a core motive in the core motivation for the US invasion/occupation of Iraq in 2003 is shown by the fact that it was the first near totally privatized war in US history. According to a Christian Science Monitor, "By 2008, the US Department of Defense employed 155,826 private contractors in Iraq – and 152,275 troops. This degree of privatization is unprecedented in modern warfare." The report goes on to put the contracting system in historic perspective by noting that although private contractors had a battlefield presence in most post-WWII US conflicts, the Iraq War (2003) was the first time such contracting went beyond simply logistical and base support. The heavy reliance on private contracting became unprecedented during the 2003 Iraq War.''


more ...

 

[gopher]

Green Berets: Afghan Troops Hide During Fights, Rely on US
Zabul Battle Saw Afghan Forces Hiding Behind a Rock


Green Berets: Afghan Troops Hide During Fights, Rely on US -- News from Antiwar.com




The talk among Pentagon officials that the Afghan military is increasingly able to operate on its own is just that, talk, as a new report includes comments from Green Berets criticizing the incompetence of the Afghan National Army.

The Green Berets complained particularly of an early June battle in the Zabul Province during which Afghan soldiers were refusing to fight and “hiding among trees and behind a rock” while they waited for the US troops to do the fighting.

Such reports aren’t normally the sort of thing that go public, and ended up in the report on a “friendly fire” airstrike that killed five US soldiers during the battle, with the report including all Green Beret comments on the matter.

The captain in the report said that Afghan National Army forces routinely show up with far fewer soldiers than promised, and are virtually unable to operate after dark. When the fighting picked up, the Afghan forces headed for the woods and waited for the fighting to end, “huddled behind a rock.”





This should be exciting news for those apologists who love perpetual war and perpetual war profiteering.





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