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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.