Afghanistan: Pentagon Contracts May Be Funding The Taliban

GlobalPost:

KABUL -- It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

At a staff meeting in 2006, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, who was then commander of Combined Forces Afghanistan, took a sip of bottled water.

Then he looked at the label of one of the Western companies that were being paid millions of dollars a year to ship bottled water by the container load into Afghanistan.

Read the whole story: GlobalPost

Comments

[haval2]

09:29 AM on 10/07/2009

What doe the generals say about this? What about John Mc Cain and his blind faith in all generals and all things "Pentagon." Who is watching this stuff?

[onenvrnos]

09:18 AM on 10/07/2009

We need to just get out, especially since our country needs to focus within its own borders and get things right. The longer we stay, supply aid, and have military presence, the more America is hated...the more money goes down the drain...and the more American military personnel lose their lives. It is a quagmire, like Vietnam. Our presence is our destruction.

And, again, if the Bush administration had done their job properly, they wouldn't have let Bid Laden go. They had him captured in Afghanistan, and they let him go. And, if it's true that we actually flew Bin Laden out of the U.S. shortly after 911, then Bush and his colleagues should be prosecuted. The problem is now so convoluted that most of the time will just be spent unraveling the mess before anything positive can be achieved. Then, when we leave, the Taliban will infiltrate again as they always do. It's just time to get out.

[SangZe]

07:22 AM on 10/07/2009

Business as usual.

[duxguts]

01:57 AM on 10/07/2009

Are you telling me that no one checks what happens to all the money spent on contractors by the Pentagon and Date Department. This comes as a complete shock. Oh, and some Awe too.

[vascopyjama]

12:18 AM on 10/07/2009

I personally think that everything the Pentagon does aids the Taliban. Imagine how many new recruits the must get every time a wedding party is blown to smithereens by a missile fired by a drone.

[KIVPossum]

03:11 AM on 10/07/2009

The Pentagon needs the Taliban just as the Taliban needs the Pentagon. They have some sort of a simbiotic relationship.

[AZterritory]

08:35 PM on 10/06/2009

Read "Charlie Wilson's War".

[SteadyOn]

10:39 PM on 10/06/2009

Best EVER. Did you know that George Crile was 85% finished with research on the follow up to that book? Wouldn't you love to read the next chapter???

[eileenflemingWAWA]

06:05 PM on 10/06/2009

"...you can't understand the Taliban without knowing about America's covert operations in the region in the 1980s...Reagan's administration, mainly through the CIA, used the Pakistani Intelligence services to fund, arm, and train Afghan and foreign Islamist jihadis to defeat the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

"Pakistan subsequently used "channels built with U.S. money" to install in Afghanistan a friendly government -- the Taliban.

"...the W. Bush administration invaded the country and the U.S. ousted the Taliban, it installed Hamid Karzai as president and returned many of the old Islamist jihadis to power in his government. Thus, this peculiar, well-established fact underlies the current war in Afghanistan: the United States sponsored both sides.

"What's wrong with this new Obama strategy:

"...the local Pashtun population...are as fed up as anybody with the puppet Karzai. Like millions of other Afghans, they say Karzai has done nothing for the people. But saddled with history, Karzai remains the horse the U.S. rode in on."

Excerpted "To all the Sharp Dressed Soldiers Shipping Out"
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1343&Itemid=222

[dadw5boys]

08:48 PM on 10/06/2009

Don't forget Jummy Carter !

[futate01]

05:00 PM on 10/06/2009

Maybe? We clearly are. When you throw money in the dessert with no real oversight what do you think is going to happen?

[Ping]

04:58 PM on 10/06/2009

Any material support given to the Afghans will immediately end up in the hands of the Taliban.

[CarmanK]

03:46 PM on 10/06/2009

Can anyone tell us about Global Post?? I just read their home page and their sponsors are Bank of America and Liberty Mutual. Any thought on the reliability of the news on the global stage???
Nation building is for the birds. We spend billions to help people that are be extorted by the Taliban. So, we are partially financing the "enemy in the name of commerce". Far too many abuses of power and squandered dollars happened under the Bushies. The US needs to get a handle on the flow of money into enemy territory.

[NANANACHMAN]

01:16 PM on 10/06/2009

Just like the good old Iran Contra Daze