Planes Parked in Weeds in Kabul After $486 Million Spent

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-10/planes-parked-in-weeds-in-kabul-after-486-million-spent.html


The failed transport planes add to billions of dollars of wasted U.S. tax dollars..

Sixteen broken down transport planes that cost US taxpayers at least $486 million are languishing among the weeds, wooden cargo boxes and old tires at Kabul International Airport, waiting to be destroyed without ever being delivered to the Afghan Air Force.

The special inspector general for Afghanistan is investigating why the refurbished G222 turboprop aircraft from Finmeccanica SpA’s (FNC) Alenia Aermacchi North America unit no longer can be flown after logging only 200 of 4,500 hours of U.S.-led training flights and missions required from January to September 2012 under a U.S Air Force contract because of persistent maintenance issues.

The unused transport planes are in addition to the billions of dollars in wasted U.S. funds documented by the inspector general’s office since American troops entered Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. They also compound the doubts about the Afghan Air Force’s capability to operate independently after U.S. forces withdraw by the end of next year.

“We need answers to this huge waste of U.S. taxpayer money,” John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said in an e-mailed statement. “Who made the decision to purchase these planes, and why? We need to get to the bottom of this, and that’s why we’re opening this inquiry.”

[liberal N proud]

1. Feeding the Military Industrial Complex

Why fix a plane when you can buy a new one?

[BlueStreak]

29. If we are going to piss away a half billion bucks, it should at least be

with an American company that employed Americans to waste that money.

[liberal N proud]

31. I am sure there was a 1%'er that made a boat load off the deal.

[kelliekat44]

46. And the people who worried about defense spending cuts in this budget negotiation should lose their

jobs.

[Octafish]

2. ''Money trumps peace.'' -- George W Bush, Feb. 14, 2007

War without end isn't about right and wrong. It's about who gets paid what and that's about it forever.

[calimary]

26. Yeah, that sure was some peachy-keen "valentine" for the people of the United States from that jerk.

''Money trumps peace.'' -- George W Bush, Feb. 14, 2007

But at least we have one documented case where he told the truth!

Good that you posted this, Octafish. We all need to remember it. It should be posted and reposted regularly so no one forgets.

[Octafish]

42. Thanks, calimary.

I brought it up several times at the Duquesne JFK conference. Every time, the people were surprised to hear Bushler said them -- but not surprised, considering Corporate McPravda's MOCKINGBIRD marching orders. What makes me sad is how no one at the Department of Justice has gotten around to investigating Bush for lying America into an unnecessary, immoral, disastrous and illegal war in Iraq. From here in Detroit, it looks like treason.

[calimary]

47. Hey, from here in L.A., it looks like treason too.

War crimes for sure.

[Brigid]

3. And yet supposedly we can't afford . . .

Food stamps, extending unemployment benefits, education, infrastructure, single-payer healthcare . . . You get the idea.

[bullwinkle428]

9. +1000.

[Blue_Tires]

13. This is the part where I ask WHERE are all the teabagger deficit hawks NOW?

Probably in some back room inventing new ways to shave more nickels off of Social Security or the postal service...

[geomon666]

32. THIS! A THOUSAND TIMES, THIS!

It is so fucking aggravating to see these military boondoggles.

[jsr]

4. $486 million is spare change in the Pentagon budget

which is unknown and unlimited.

[Atman]

7. Hell, Rummy got $9 BILLION in cash, off-the-books, for Iraq

What's a couple of stupid planes? Peanuts!

[seveneyes]

5. Someone is responsible for these atrocities

And they are still collecting a huge paycheck from the money we pay in taxes. Too many people in government positions with no conscience and no sense of how lucky they are to have our hard work support their sloth. There should be an honesty test before being hired to work as a government worker. Meanwhile, working families are struggling to survive and criminals roam free.

[Atman]

6. It's the damned poor people and their food stamps!

Not to mention the welfare queens and their pink Cadillacs.

[PeoViejo]

8. I would bet it was a CIA boondoggle

...Someone had a Wet Dream about the old days in Air America.....

[calimary]

27. Welcome to DU, PeoViejo!

Glad you're here! Not a bad guess - my first suspicion would lead me to look toward the bush/cheney direction. Whose pockets stood to be lined the most? ALWAYS follow the money.

But God Forbid we spend another nickel on food stamp programs or unemployment insurance...

[PeoViejo]

35. Thank You, Calimary

The spooks have a fondness for that type of twin-engined Transport Aircraft, thus my conjecture.

[Snarkoleptic]

10. Guns and butter.

To say our priorities are misplaced, is massive understatement.

[Ikonoklast]

11. They served their purpose exactly as planned. Funnel billions to war profiteers.

Mission Accomplished.


Every single person in the Bush administration was a traitor to this country.

[bvar22]

21. The Democrats continued to fund The WARS....

..even after they regained the Majorities in the House and the Senate in 2006,
despite running on Ending the WARS in 2006.

I HATE Republicans as much or more than most here,
but we can't solve our problems unless we have the courage to assess responsibility with some degree of honesty.

[Ikonoklast]

23. And those wars are being ended.

You just cannot up and leave on a moment's notice after irreparably destroying the government, economy, infrastructure of a nation you invaded unless chaos is your actual objective.

If we had abruptly left in 2007 it would have been a terrible mistake, even bigger than the first one.

[bvar22]

24. Excuses and More Excuses for More Wars and More military spending.

Like I said, the problems won't be solved unless we have the courage to honestly assess responsibility,
but it IS a lot easier and much more fun to just Blame-the-other-Guy or
Look the Other Way or "Look Forward".

The Republicans certainly deserve much of the blame,
but so does a large percentage of the Democratic Party who were either profiteering from the WARS (like DiFi), or lacked the courage to stand up and say "No. This is wrong."

[Ikonoklast]

25. Yeah, both parties are the same, gotcha.

Keep pushing that meme, no one is buying it.


Teabaggers maybe, they certainly say it a great deal, but they also have a third party agenda.

[bvar22]

45. Who said that?

Do you usually just make stuff up and post it to DU?
Does that work for you?

Please cite where I said "both parties are the same",
or eat your kindergarten Strawman.

Clearly, both Parties are NOT the same,
and I have never posted anything to indicate or imply that they are the same.
However, I have never been shy about saying that the Democratic Party could be so much better.

[font size=4]The Democratic Party Honor Roll[/font]
These Democrats should be remembered for their principled stand against the WAR Machine. Shame on those Democrats whose names do NOT appear on the following list.

[font size=3]
The Iraq War Resolution
The Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq[/font]

United States Senate

In the Senate, the 21 Democrats, one Republican and one Independent courageously voted their consciences in 2002 against the War in Iraq :

Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii)
Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mexico)
Barbara Boxer (D-California)
Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia)
Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota)
Jon Corzine (D-New Jersey)
Mark Dayton (D-Minnesota)
Dick Durbin (D-Illinois)
Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin)
Bob Graham (D-Florida)
Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)
Jim Jeffords (I-Vermont)
Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts)
Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont)
Carl Levin (D-Michigan)
Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland)
Patty Murray (D-Washington)
Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island)
Paul Sarbanes (D-Maryland)
Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan)
The late Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota)
Ron Wyden (D-Oregon)

Lincoln Chaffee (R-Rhode Island)


United States House of Representatives

Six House Republicans and one independent joined 126 Democratic members of the House of Represenatives:

Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii)
Tom Allen (D-Maine)
Joe Baca (D-California)
Brian Baird (D-Washington DC)
John Baldacci (D-Maine, now governor of Maine)
Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin)
Xavier Becerra (D-California)
Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon)
David Bonior (D-Michigan, retired from office)
Robert Brady (D-Pennsylvania)
Corinne Brown (D-Florida)
Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)
Lois Capps (D-California)
Michael Capuano (D-Massachusetts)
Benjamin Cardin (D-Maryland)
Julia Carson (D-Indiana)
William Clay, Jr. (D-Missouri)
Eva Clayton (D-North Carolina, retired from office)
James Clyburn (D-South Carolina)
Gary Condit (D-California, retired from office)
John Conyers, Jr. (D-Michigan)
Jerry Costello (D-Illinois)
William Coyne (D-Pennsylvania, retired from office)
Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland)
Susan Davis (D-California)
Danny Davis (D-Illinois)
Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon)
Diana DeGette (D-Colorado)
Bill Delahunt (D-Massachusetts)
Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut)
John Dingell (D-Michigan)
Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas)
Mike Doyle (D-Pennsylvania)
Anna Eshoo (D-California)
Lane Evans (D-Illinois)
Sam Farr (D-California)
Chaka Fattah (D-Pennsylvania)
Bob Filner (D-California)
Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts)
Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas)
Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois)
Alice Hastings (D-Florida)
Earl Hilliard (D-Alabama, retired from office)
Maurice Hinchey (D-New York)
Ruben Hinojosa (D-Texas)
Rush Holt (D-New Jersey)
Mike Honda (D-California)
Darlene Hooley (D-Oregon)
Inslee
Jackson (Il.)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Johnson, E.B.
Jones (OH)
Kaptur
Kildee
Kilpatrick
Kleczka
Kucinich
LaFalce
Langevin
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Lee
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lipinski
Lofgren
Maloney (CT)
Matsui
McCarthy (MO)
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
McKinney
Meek (FL)
Meeks (NY)
Menendez
Millender-McDonald
Miller
Mollohan
Moran (Va)
Nadler
Napolitano
Neal
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Owens
Pallone
Pastor
Payne
Pelosi
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Reyes
Rivers
Rodriguez
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Sabo
Sanchez
Sanders
Sawyer
Schakowsky
Scott
Serrano
Slaughter
Snyder
Solis
Stark
Strickland
Stupak
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Tierney
Towns
Udall (NM)
Udall (CO)
Velazquez
Visclosky
Waters
Watson
Watt
Woolsey
Wu

... I'd like to give a nod of appreciation to those 156 Congresspeople and Senators who voted against the AUMF of 2002. This isn't meant to be praise for everything they've ever done, before or since, merely acknowledgment on this, they were right when so many were wrong.



[font color=firebrick size=3][center]"If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for,
at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them."
--- Paul Wellstone[/font][/center]
[center][/font]
[font size=1]photo by bvar22
Shortly before Sen Wellstone was killed[/center][/font]

[font size=5 color=firebrick]Solidarity/OWS![/font]

[Egalitarian Thug]

30. Complete bullshit. Why do you accept it?

War is chaos and nothing has or will ever change that. Pick any industrial age war, it ends in chaos that takes years after the military stops the wholesale slaughter for the chaos to settle down, if it ever does.

Afghanistan is every bit the clusterfuck that we made in Iraq and there's not one thing that we can do about it now. We created a nightmare and dumped it on the world. The best thing we can do now is get out of everybody else's business and get to work on our own.

[Ikonoklast]

33. And you would let even more innocent people die needlessly if we had just up and left.

You accept that there is nothing we can do to fix things in either country, I disagree. It was incumbent upon us to try.

Cutting and running just after we broke both countries to the point of total disfunction would have led to an even more disastrous outcome.

[Egalitarian Thug]

34. You say "even more innocent people die" as if you had any reasonable evidence

that less people will die because we stayed.

How many innocent Iraqi lives did we save by staying there an extra seven years? What hell-on-earth did we stop from happening while we poured another trillion or two into the corporate coffers? Do you think Iraq is doing well now? Are the Iraqis better off than if we'd just listened to the people that know what they are talking about and partitioned it and left?

There is no purpose to staying and we cannot stop the consequences of leaving, so the best choice is to do it quickly.

[Ikonoklast]

36. The sectarian violence would have escalated into a full-on civil war, the consequences of which

would have been far worse than what actually was happening.

Who would have enforced the partition?

Would the Iraqis bent on civil strife have agreed to let that solution stand?

Doubt it very, very much.

[xchrom]

39. we've done nothing for iraq since invading or being so good as to get out

http://www.policymic.com/articles/76133/this-chart-shows-a-sobering-trend-in-iraq-since-the-u-s-left

There have been more Iraqi civilian deaths in 2013 than any year since 2008. More than 2011 and 2012 combined, 7,157 civilians have been killed in Iraq since January this year. Check out the chart from BBC below:



********

Afghanistan civilian casualties

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/aug/10/afghanistan-civilian-casualties-statistics

2012, the latest year for which numbers are available, has shown the first drop since the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) first began collecting on civilian casualties. Though the total number of casualties fell by 9%, the number of deaths fell by 12%, while the number of injured actually rose by 2%. Last year's figures bring the total number of civilians who have lost their lives in the armed conflict over the past six years to 14,728.

7,559 Afghan casualties were documented by UNAMA, of which 2,754 were deaths and 4,805 were injuries. The Taliban and other anti-government elements have been blamed for 4 out of every 5 civilians who were killed in Afghanistan last year - continuing a rising trend since 2007. The number of civilian deaths resulting from pro-government forces has by contrast fallen by 23%.


***

the taliban and whomever else certainly seem to be able to extract lethal puishment regardless of our 'intervention'.

we're not helping in afghanistan except to proide highways for corruption among the few.

***

Afghan Opium Cultivation and Production Seen Rising

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/world/asia/afghan-opium-cultivation-and-production-seen-rising.html?_r=0

KABUL, Afghanistan — Despite years of international effort to reel back Afghanistan’s opium culture, cultivation and production hit record levels this year, and programs to counteract them have floundered, according to a new United Nations study.

Given how central an issue the country’s growing drug economy has become — driving official corruption, helping to fund the insurgency, creating instability in neighboring countries and intensifying a domestic addiction crisis — Western diplomats and officials said in interviews that the seeming failure of the drug war in Afghanistan will weigh heavily on the legacy of the dozen-year NATO military mission as it draws to a close next year.

“We have failed, we have lost — that’s all there is to it,” said one Western diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity so as not to offend Afghan government officials.

The new report, the Afghanistan Opium Survey for 2013, projects that the land area used for opium cultivation in Afghanistan, long the dominant supplier of most of the world’s heroin, reached a historic high in 2013 of 516,000 acres, a 36 percent increase from 2012. Now, 19 of the country’s 34 provinces are opium growers, also an increase, and overall production was up by almost half — 49 percent — from the previous year, according to the report, officially released on Wednesday.

***

the united states would prefer to stay in afghanistan to the tune of 7,000 or more troops.
it is NOT the desire of the u.s. to leave -- in spite of the violent chaos we have caused.
our 'peace' talks with the taliban have apparently not produced the desired results and karzai and grew fatten their wallets through corruption aided by the u.s.

[Ikonoklast]

40. That graph shows we kept the lid on right up until the draw-down.

Those that would use violence to further their agenda now have freer reign to do so.

Kinda reinforces my point, things could have easily been far, far worse.

[xchrom]

41. hallucinations.

all we have done in afghanistan or iraq is increase violent chaos.

we have not 'pacified' any one -- certainly not the taliban -- we were NEVER going to 'pacify' iraq -- no matter your outlandish 'D' loyalty and attempts to rewrite shameful american history for the 'good' of the party.

[Egalitarian Thug]

44. You have absolutely nothing to base that statement on. Repeating a wish often enough might cause

some to eventually believe in it, but it's still just wishful thinking.

[Plucketeer]

12. The thing is...

They can EASILY find a disenfranchised vet with a shit-paying job who still needs food stamps and other "handouts". But someone to answer for a lost half a Bil??? How many Issas do you think there are to go around???

[gtar100]

14. I want to say something snarky but this sort of thing is all too typical of our military,

our congressional leaders, and defense contractors who are are just so careless with our money... money that should be spent with a meaningful purpose. Instead it's treated carelessly and wastefully for the worst reasons. It's shameful and pathetic. Symbolic of what the United States has become as a nation because of the greed that is allowed to run rampant without check, masquerading as a political and economic system. In reality, it's broken, and the Military stands front and center in its midst of the ones who broke it. "Protecting our freedom"... yea, Bullshit!

[TwilightGardener]

15. This is the third story about massive waste in Afghanistan in three weeks. Why is all of this

only coming to light NOW? Most or all of the people involved in these bad decisions have moved on (or were even promoted), so no one will be held accountable.

[n2doc]

16. Look over there- Solyndra! Fisker! Wind Turbines!

Please do ignore this minor problem. It will be swept under the rug soon.

[Javaman]

17. We either park them in weeds there and save the cost of flying them back or...

we pay huge amounts to fly them back here and park them in weeds here...

[Hassin Bin Sober]

18. Who made the decision to purchase?

(FNC) Alenia Aermacchi North America unit . of course!!

[Evasporque]

19. But Halliburton profited from the logistics of delivery

and support of those aircraft.

[Brother Buzz]

20. Airplanes are fungible - they can be here or they can be there

[calimary]

28. Whoa! Where is this?

I was gonna say "your tax dollars at work" but it's more like "your tax dollars at idle."

[Brother Buzz]

37. Tucson, Arizona, I believe

There are a couple of aircraft boneyards around; military and civilian

Sneaking into one to see what I can see is on my bucket list

[Comrade Grumpy]

22. The solution is obvious: Cut taxes, food stamps, and Social Security.

[Initech]

38. It's about time we change the dialogue.

It's not wasteful government spending. It's wasteful *MILITARY* spending!

[MichiganVote]

43. Your food stamp,education,agriculture,mental health services dollars at work.

This is what they want our Social Security for.