The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has found another tale of fraud, this time involving the "world's most expensive gas station":
"DOD charged the American taxpayer $43 million for what is likely the world's most expensive gas station." That's what Special Inspector General John F. Sopko found when he looked at the construction of a natural gas station in Sheberghan, Afghanistan.
According to the report, at most that station should have cost about $500,000. But in this case, the Department of Defense's Task Force for Stability and Business Operations awarded Central Asian Engineering a contract to build the station for a little under $3 million. But somehow the spending got out of control. Here's how the inspector general explains it in the report:
The Task Force spent $42,718,739 between 2011 and 2014 to fund the construction and to supervise the initial operation of the CNG station (approximately $12.3 [million] in direct costs and $30.0 [million] in overhead costs).
To make matters worse, the inspector general found that the Department of Defense didn't even study whether a natural gas station would be used in Afghanistan. And when the IG came asking questions, the Department of Defense said that all the people who worked on the project were gone, now, so they could not provide answers as to why a project that should have cost $500,000 ended up costing nearly $43 million.
NPR's article lists previous coverage of wartime corruption and waste in Afghanistan. For example, $7.6 billion has been spent on countering opium poppy production in Afghanistan, yet production reached an all-time high in 2013.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @08:53PM
Counting interest, the costs for Iraq could come to $6 trillion [reuters.com].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 04 2015, @08:59PM
That's an obscene amount of money spent on not improving anything for ourselves, Iraqi citizens, world stability, or even American military hegemony.
It's more money than the GDP of some G-fucking-8 nations.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday November 04 2015, @09:15PM
Yes it was expensive, but what are you thinking of with the G-8 GDP comment?
Now the money spent on combating opium would make the world GDP list, somewhere around the 140th poorest country. It it was all in one year.
The most frustrating aspect for me is how there is no documentation for where this money went. This fueling station looks like straight up corruption to the first degree.
(Score: 3, Funny) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 04 2015, @09:49PM
Don't you know? Having transparency for 25-30% of the US budget would pose a risk to national security.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @11:24PM
Yup... everything under Obamas watch. Trump will take care of this BS.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @11:46PM
The US sticking it's nose in everyone's business IS a risk to national security.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2015, @02:52AM
(same AC) Recently I was listening to an interview [kpfa.org] with Laurence Shoup. At about 26:51 into it, he says that Kenneth Pollack, who was in the Clinton administration, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs called "It's the Oil, Stupid" and a book called Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq calling for war as a way of gaining control over Iraq's oil. Shoup also says that in Alan Greenspan's memoirs, Greenspan wrote "it's inconvenient to mention, but the Iraq war was all about oil."
Shoup says that another goal was "trying to create a neoliberal paradise," under the guidance of L. Paul Bremer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2015, @05:59AM
Armies are not about having the best weapons and shiniest toys. The best armies have great logistics. And machines tend to run on oil! So gotta go and get ourselves some of that oil to make sure our armies continue working.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 04 2015, @09:49PM
"Action needed to be taken," said Steven Bucci, the military assistant to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the run-up to the war and today a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think-tank.
Bucci, who was unconnected to the Watson study, agreed with its observation that the forecasts for the cost and duration of the war proved to be a tiny fraction of the real costs.
"If we had had the foresight to see how long it would last and even if it would have cost half the lives, we would not have gone in," Bucci said. "Just the time alone would have been enough to stop us. Everyone thought it would be short."
More likely, they'd have glossed over that and just spun some propaganda about how they didn't know the occupation would take so long - like Bucci did just now.
(Score: 1) by tekk on Thursday November 05 2015, @02:12AM
Please, as if we got any gas out of invading Iraq...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2015, @06:01AM
Sure we did, we built a gas station there too.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @09:18PM
should have been from the 'corporate-welfare-is-freedum' dept.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @09:28PM
Bolded lines are the funniest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @09:44PM
where at least the gas is cheap.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Covalent on Wednesday November 04 2015, @10:01PM
And I think he's right: the purpose of the federal government is to provide jobs for otherwise unemployable people. Ever go to the DMV, post office, county clerk, etc. and encounter a completely incompetent worker? They have a job though...
Now he's a bit cynical so maybe not all of the people employed by Uncle Sam are unemployable. But lots are. And so rather than giving them welfare (and time to cause trouble) we give them menial jobs that feed hem and keep them busy.
Which is why a hammer costs $18,000 and a toilet seat costs $200,000 and a gas station costs $43,000,000. Because it includes wages for dozens and dozens of contractors and soldiers and support people and and and and and ...
So which do you prefer? Welfare or $43M gas stations?
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 5, Touché) by NoMaster on Wednesday November 04 2015, @10:10PM
Umm ... isn't only one of those part of the federal government?
I see now why you think your father-in-law is brilliant. It's all relative...
Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @10:54PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2015, @02:56AM
Welfare is itself a make-work program for all those social workers.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday November 04 2015, @10:55PM
I never understand why Republicans are against welfare for citizens but are all for welfare for the military industrial complex.
I guess pork is more important than health.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday November 04 2015, @11:30PM
Another problem with your theory is that many of the people who got rich in Afghanistan and Iraq (or in general through defense spending) are private contractors. Boeing, Raytheon, Blackwater/Xe, Halliburton, and many smaller players. Many have friends in government and military, and retired generals and Congressmen have a nice selection of executive positions waiting for them.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by deadstick on Wednesday November 04 2015, @11:53PM
Which is why a hammer costs $18,000
So, why don't you go into the hammer business?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2015, @07:04AM
Umm... those "normal" items can sometimes indeed be expensive (think space-rated stuff for NASA), but I'd bet in most cases are made to appear so expensive because they serve as a pretext to funnel money to other ends, e.g. black programs, bribes and so on.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Wednesday November 04 2015, @10:17PM
the Department of Defense said that all the people who worked on the project were gone, now, so they could not provide answers
there's an easy way to fix this problem: give us their names.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday November 04 2015, @11:34PM
Classified SUPER DOUBLE TOP SECRET NOFORN
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Thursday November 05 2015, @12:02AM
well... guess we'll just have to jail the person at the DoD in charge of giving them money without proper justification. :)
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday November 05 2015, @12:52AM
edited to add a link to the report:
https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/special%20projects/SIGAR-16-2-SP.pdf [sigar.mil]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by EQ on Thursday November 05 2015, @12:54AM
... That a lot of the money wasn't going to the soldiers, or their pay or equipment and supplies... it was being handed out to bribe locals and line the pockets of contractors who have friend in congress or are former flag rank officers and their buddies in the pentagon. And another big bucket of cash went to the government officials cousin "Hamid" just happened to get contracts for work that never got done but kicked back a lot of that so the politicians and police look the other way. I doubt much of the audience here or at the green site is military or a recent veteran (given the stupidity and sneering attitudes of soldiers as "unemployables" and menials as other posters said), but ask those who have seen Kabul first hand, or those in Baghdad in the green zone. You'll hear the reality that is far different from what the US press feeds you.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday November 05 2015, @01:51AM
I don't know about soldiers being "unemployable. Most of the folks I know who hire people prefer military veterans. To quote one pal who runs a large solar installation company, "Give me a grunt or jarhead any time. Give them a job and they will bitch and moan the whole time but it gets done."
And there may well be at least a couple of military folks that were enriched. This sounds like a Milo Minderbender type of operation. Likely run by a low level officer and/or a couple of CWOs.
Maybe paying out a few million to warlords and contractors and stashing the rest. So now all the people that worked on the project and are now gone are probably living the high life some place like Hawaii or Thailand.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday November 05 2015, @02:40AM
And another big bucket of cash went to the government officials cousin "Hamid" just happened to get contracts for work that never got done but kicked back a lot of that so the politicians and police look the other way.
This is what struck me as the most likely use of all that money.
Build something to distract the bean counters, while paying off the local warlords for whatever favors you need from them. That kind of money would get them to turn on their own grand fathers. Digging deep into this will probably show that most of this money didn't go to the contractors, but some locals got very rich, and are currently living in LA or Pheonix.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Thursday November 05 2015, @06:35PM
Iraq was bizarre. One fob would be a bombed hellhole where you couldn't ever take off your armor and QRF never stopped rolling. Another fob (Speicher for example) would have coffee shops, massage parlor, barbershop, tailor, fast food joints, and a PX that sold stupid stuff like charcoal grills, frozen steaks, and big screen tvs.
One time, while my platoon was living in some terrible canvas tents with plywood floors, this Captain shows up and says we cost too much because KBR (contractor) was charging the gov $7k a month to live there. $7,000 for a shit canvas tent per month! We told the Captain we would gladly sleep on the ground or in the trucks for a cut of that, hah. We were evicted into some nicer metal buildings that were cheaper. The major thing was we weren't allow to build anything. We couldn't dig a foxhole. If we wanted a foxhole then we had to visit KBR and fill out a request form. They would charge the government something (probably crazy) and then hire a local guy for 2$ an hour to dig. Contractors made out like bandits in Iraq. Anyways, i could go on and on about the stupid that was Iraq.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday November 05 2015, @12:15PM
Just plug the words "planes full of cash" into google and read a few linked pages. Iraq was simply an exercise in milking the US taxpayer.