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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow Much Does It Cost to 'Liberate' a Country?
http://www.thenation.com/article/how-much-does-it-cost-to-liberate-a-country/Its never ended. In 2011, the final report of the congressionally mandated Commission on Wartime Contracting estimated that somewhere between $31 billion and $60 billion taxpayer dollars had been lost to fraud and waste in the American reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, for instance, there was that $75 million police academy, initially hailed as crucial to US efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the countrys security. It was, however, so poorly constructed that it proved a health hazard. In 2006, feces and urine rained from the ceilings in [its] student barracks, and that was only the beginning of its problems.
When the bad press started, Parsons Corporation, the private contractor that built it, agreed to fix it for nothing more than the princely sum already paid. A year later, a New York Times reporter visited and found that the ceilings are still stained with excrement, parts of the structures are crumbling, and sections of the buildings are unusable because the toilets are filthy and nonfunctioning. This seems to have been par for the course. Typically enough, the Khan Bani Saad Correctional Facility, a $40 million prison Parsons also contracted to build, was never even finished.
And these were hardly isolated cases or problems specific to Iraq. Consider, for instance, those police stations in Afghanistan believed to be crucial to standing up a new security force in that country. Despite the money poured into them and endless cost overruns, many were either never completed or never built, leaving new Afghan police recruits camping out. And the police were hardly alone. Take the $3.4 million unfinished teacher-training center in Sheberghan, Afghanistan, that an Iraqi company was contracted to build (using, of course, American dollars) and from which it walked away, money in hand.
And why stick to buildings, when there were those Iraqi roads to nowhere paid for by American dollars? At least one of them did at least prove useful to insurgent groups moving their guerrillas around (like the $37 million bridge the US Army Corps of Engineers built between Afghanistan and Tajikistan that helped facilitate the regions booming drug trade in opium and heroin). In Afghanistan, Highway 1 between the capital Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar, unofficially dubbed the highway to nowhere, was so poorly constructed that it began crumbling in its first Afghan winter.
Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)We have invaded Iraq and visited death and destruction upon its people. We too are motivated by a thirst for black gold, and we also genuinely believe in the moral superiority of our religion. Not since the conquest of Mexico has there been such a lopsided mismatch of weapons. The "war" with Iraq and the siege of Baghdad may not last three weeks but its aftermath will reverberate for countless generations. May the satisfaction of our victory outlast the collective memory of those who are about to receive our Democratic "blessing"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2624110&mesg_id=2624296
delrem
(9,688 posts)the no-bid contractors skimming a $trillion$ while the plundering happened.
And now you've got a hellscape across the whole of the Middle East, haven't you?
It didn't all happen during the George W. Bush administration, did it?
Did it?
Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)delrem
(9,688 posts)How do you suppose that hindsight could "trump foresight"?
That makes no sense to me.
Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)delrem
(9,688 posts)The largest anti-war demonstration ever on this planet happened before the US decided that what the fuck, it'd destroy Iraq.
If you want to understand why it happened anyway, regardless of moral consciousness, take a look at who profited.
That has nothing to do with "hindsight" or "foresight", it has to do with analysis of fact.
That brings it back to the only point I care to make.
Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)I was in those demonstrations.
Where were you?
wtf?
Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)I've shown you my position at the time, Johnny come lately.
You have any evidence you were against the invasion of Iraq at the time it happened?
Hindsight trumps Foresight?
Do you get it now?
delrem
(9,688 posts)But I stand by my only point, which you kinda ... lost in your hostility.