SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 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.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(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.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.