U.S. Tax Dollars Fueling Afghan Insurgency

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/21/eveningnews/main6604606.shtml

June 21, 2010

U.S. Tax Dollars Fueling Afghan Insurgency

House Investigation: Private Contractors Paying Warlords, Criminals to Get Supplies to U.S. and NATO Bases

By Lara Logan

(CBS) Billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are fuelling corruption in Afghanistan and funding the insurgency, according to a six-month investigation by the House subcommittee on National Security and Foreign affairs.

The committee's chairman, Rep. John F. Tierney, D-Mass., told CBS News: "the business is war and the war is business and you've got ‘Warlord Inc.' going on over there."

Committee investigators found that private contractors in Afghanistan have been paying local warlords, criminals, government officials and a list of others for security on Afghanistan's roads, to get much needed supplies to U.S and NATO bases. But even worse, anecdotal evidence indicates that U.S. tax dollars are also going into the hands of the Taliban, who own many of the roads and areas through which the trucking convoys have to pass, reports CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan.

That would mean that the U.S. is literally funding the enemy, as violence escalates daily in Afghanistan and more U.S soldiers and Marines are dying than ever before in this war.

"This is the tip of the iceberg," Tierney said in an interview with CBS News. "There are other contracts over there, whether they are cell phone contracts or base security, and if you're paying the wrong people to do that and fuelling corruption, then it's not really going to speak well for the reason we sent our men and women there and the reason they're sacrificing their lives".

Can't have one without the other.

Waged properly there's not enough left of the other side to fuel anything.

The last real war we fought was against Japan. Everything since has been throwing young lives down the bottomless pit of political ambition.