Over 3,000 American have been killed protecting fuel convoys, so the Pentagon has a strategy to get serious about efficiency. CNN
Julia Harte, Slate: The Fraud of War
U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have stolen tens of millions through bribery, theft, and rigged contracts.
U.S. Army Specialist Stephanie Charboneau sat at the center of a complex trucking network in Forward Operating Base Fenty near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border that distributed daily tens of thousands of gallons of what troops called “liquid gold”: the refined petroleum that fueled the international coalition’s vehicles, planes, and generators.
A prominent sign in the base read: “The Army Won’t Go If The Fuel Don’t Flow.” But Charboneau, 31, a mother of two from Washington state, felt alienated after a supervisor’s harsh rebuke. Her work was a dreary routine of recording fuel deliveries in a computer and escorting trucks past a gate. But it was soon to take a dark turn into high-value crime.
She began an affair with a civilian, Jonathan Hightower, who worked for a Pentagon contractor that distributed fuel from Fenty, and one day in March 2010 he told her about “this thing going on” at other U.S. military bases around Afghanistan, she recalled in a recent telephone interview.
WNU Editor: Thousands of U.S. soldiers have been killed or wounded protecting fuel convoys in Afghanistan and Iraq .... so fuel theft is a serious offense. But I suspect that this crime is just the tip of the iceberg.
Update: As I said .... the tip of the iceberg .... Too Big To Prosecute: Army Struggles To Cope With Rampant Fraud In The Military (FDL). Hat tip to reader Jay for this link.
3 comments:
I feel so bad for Charboneau,waaaah.
People in factories have been dealing with this forever. They generally turn on the tunes.
If you have a boring job, get an interesting hobby.
If yo have a cerebral job get a boring, labor intensive hobby that is rewarding.
America's warriors signed up to defend America against its enemies both foreign and domestic. Instead the leadership chose to waste the lives and health of these people on fruitless nation building operations around the world. The resources of the American military have been spent on these operations to the point that even basic national defense is now problematic at best and will be for the foreseeable future. Furthermore this assumes the US government actually STOPS the stupidity forthwith. Unfortunately the American with the exception of some minor pathetic bleating have done little to nothing to stand up for these people who are giving so much for them and would be wiling to give even more.
ESSENTIALLY THE AMERICAN PEOPLE NEED TO INSIST OUR WARRIORS BE USED FOR WHAT THEY SIGNED UP FOR WHICH IS TO DEFEND AMERICA AND ITS INTERESTS!! We've largely failed them and the government has clearly failed them in more ways that can be measured. As such, it seems hardly surprising that such acts of corruption would occur. If situations like this are ever tried, I'd hope the American people would insist that these brave men and women be treated with a certain amount of dignity in the meting out of justice.
America won the fight in Afghanistan.
The Soviets were forced out.
"The total withdrawal of all Soviet soldiers from Afghanistan was completed on 15 February 1989"
There was no nation building or rebuilding.
In 1993 the 6 year old Cross Border Humanitarian Aid Program ended.
In 1994 The Pakistani ISI created the Taliban.
America won. A vacuum was created and America stepped out. There was no (not much) nation rebuilding.
Instead we got Mohammed Omar.
You can cry all you want about nation building, but to do so you have to explain away the Pottery Barn rule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottery_Barn_rule
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