Where Did All The Money Disappear In Afghanistan?

Matthew Gault, War Is Boring: How the Pentagon Lost Track of $45 Billion

It’s almost impossible to audit what taxpayers have spent to rebuild Afghanistan

Since 2002, Congress has set aside $104 billion specifically to rebuild Afghanistan. Of that, $66 billion went to the Pentagon.

Recently, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction asked the military to account for all that spending. It couldn’t. According to a new report from SIGAR, the Pentagon only knows how it spent a third of its reconstruction budget.

It didn’t break any rules when it did this, and has since fixed the oversight that led to the underreporting, but it’s cold comfort for taxpayers who will probably never know how the U.S. military spent that money in Afghanistan.

Most likely … not all of it well. The Pentagon has a history of wasting billions in the country on bad projects, corrupt business partners and disreputable construction companies.

Update: The Pentagon Can't Account for $45 Billion It Spent in Afghanistan -- Gizmodo

WNU Editor: The latest report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) is here. The Nation has an interesting post on how some of the money has been spent in Afghanistan .... the one that caught my eye is IBM receiving funds to develop Afghanistan's mineral wealth (I guess they provided the computers/software) .... Blackwater: The Top Pentagon Contractor for Afghanistan Training (The Nation).