U.S. indirectly paying Afghan warlords as part of security contract

An Afghan firefighter hoses a burning oil tanker, part of a NATO convoy, after a planted device exploded.


U.S. indirectly paying Afghan warlords as part of security contract
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 22, 2010

The U.S. military is funding a massive protection racket in Afghanistan, indirectly paying tens of millions of dollars to warlords, corrupt public officials and the Taliban to ensure safe passage of its supply convoys throughout the country, according to congressional investigators.

The security arrangements, part of a $2.16 billion transport contract, violate laws on the use of private contractors, as well as Defense Department regulations, and "dramatically undermine" larger U.S. objectives of curtailing corruption and strengthening effective governance in Afghanistan, a report released late Monday said.

The report describes a Defense Department that is well aware that some of the money paid to contractors winds up in the hands of warlords and insurgents. Military logisticians on the ground are focused on getting supplies where they are needed and have "virtually no understanding of how security is actually provided" for the local truck convoys that transport more than 70 percent of all goods and materials used by U.S. troops. Alarms raised by prime trucking contractors were met by the military "with indifference and inaction," the report said.

"The findings of this report range from sobering to shocking," Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) wrote in an introduction to the 79-page report, titled "Warlord, Inc., Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan."

The report comes as the number of U.S. casualties is rising in the Afghan war, and public and congressional support is declining. The administration has been on the defensive in recent weeks, insisting that the slow progress of anti-Taliban offensives in Helmand province and the city of Kandahar does not mean that more time is needed to assess whether President Obama's strategy is working.

Unlike in the Iraq war, the security and vast majority of the trucks are provided by Afghans, a difference that Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has praised as promoting local entrepreneurship.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/21/AR2010062104628.html?hpid=topnews

I guess they're still flying in large pallets of freshly printed shrink wrapped US $100 bills. :puke:

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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4435632

"Material support intended even for benign purposes can help a terrorist group in other ways, Chief Justice John Roberts said in his majority opinion. "Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends," Roberts said. "

If the above is true, then surely the money funneled to the Taliban (warlords and insurgents), however indirectly, is still money furnished by the U.S. and that money still goes to the enemy....and under current U.S. law & considering recent SCOTUS ruling, cannot those "indirect" funds be deemed material support (to terrorism)?...since the money they "indirectly" get from the U.S. not only frees up their (Taliban/insurgents) own resources but increases them as well.

Just a thought....

No doubt the CIA is making some nice Heroin spending cash.