NATO soldiers stand with U.S. flag as a Chinook helicopter takes off after a security handover ceremony at a military academy outside Kabul June 18, 2013. Photograph: Omar Sobhani/Reuters
Bribes, Money Hidden In Teddy Bears: Welcome To US Spending In Afghanistan -- The Guardian
Millions in US taxpayer dollars has been misspent. It would have been far worse without an inspector general monitoring things.
The Department of Defense is spending more than three-quarters of a billion dollars to buy Russian-made aircraft for an Afghan aviation squad that lacks the troops and expertise to operate or maintain them. We know about this example of Pentagon waste because the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) recently uncovered it in its report to Congress. This is just one example of the important work performed by inspectors general across the federal government.
While IGs at the Internal Revenue Service and the General Services Administration have uncovered some excessive spending for team-building conferences, these "scandals" pale in comparison to the corruption, fraud, kickback schemes, and bribery uncovered by IGs looking into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thankfully, the SIGAR and the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) have recovered hundreds of millions of hard earned American taxpayer dollars because of their investigations. However, these inspectors general are temporary offices and analyze only two of the dozens of countries in which the US military operates.
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My Comment: A depressing read .... and I suspect it is only the tip of a very large iceberg.
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