Billions Wasted

Even After Our Exit



The United States has spent over ten years investing in Afghan & Iraqi programs, prisons, power plants, and Security Force facilities, which results in dumping over $30 Billion (USD) into unusable, unfinished, and unsustainable installations. 



A prison in Iraq, (which the Iraqi government has declared it did not want) cost US taxpayers $40 Million. It stands unfinished, with little hope of future completion, or use. A Kabul power plant cost roughly $300 Million, and will go unused as it is too advanced and too costly to maintain by the Afghan government. 



If that wasn’t enough pre-meditated financial waste, the United States created an $11.4 Billion Program of Facilities for the Afghan National Security Forces that may not be used because its sustainability is in question. 



Where did they get the rest of the $18 Billion loss from? Contractors. The Washington Post reports that “[t]he contractor workforce in Iraq and Afghanistan has at times exceeded 260,000 people and has sometimes outnumbered U.S. military forces in theater.”



The final report, and the suggestions for repairing this type of financial hemorrhage in the future, will be released for review on Wednesday, August 31, 2011. I suggest you tune back in on Wednesday to find out if we just wasted even more of the taxpayers’ dollars in a report full of fluff or not.



Until then, let’s pop a bottle and toast U.S. government’s financial ineptitude! Hip Hip Hooray!

Read more at the Washington Post
.