Anyone doubting that the major US escalation in Afghanistan is coming needs to read up on the stimulus-size amounts being put into base improvements there. This is a story the MSM has totally ignored and shows the US is planning on a very long-term and expensive stay.
In the last 3 years the US has spent $2.7 billion on base enlargements and this year plans $1.3 billion more. At the same time the US Agency for International Development is spending only $20 million in Afghanistan !
as reported in the Washington Post:
"The current facilities are inadequate to support the daily volume of approximately 1,000 passengers and 400 short tons of cargo each day," Lt. Col. Dan Krall, 455th Expeditionary Aerial Port Squadron commander, said in a statement.
With the transit of service personnel expected to grow to 1,650 a day, Krall said the terminal needs 1,000 seats in the terminal for personnel awaiting space on flights. Currently, the terminal has a 250-seat capacity.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...<</p>
a excellent story in today's Salon goes well beyond the Post's story:
Nowhere has the building boom been more apparent than at Bagram Air Base, a key military site used by the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. In its American incarnation, the base has significantly expanded from its old Soviet days and, in just the last two years, the population of the more than 5,000 acre compound has doubled to 20,000 troops, in addition to thousands of coalition forces and civilian contractors. To keep up with its exponential growth rate, more than $200 million in construction projects are planned or in progress at this moment on just the Air Force section of the base. "Seven days a week, concrete trucks rumble along the dusty perimeter road of this air base as bulldozers and backhoes reshape the rocky earth," Chuck Crumbo of the State reported recently. "Hundreds of laborers slap mortar onto bricks as they build barracks and offices. Four concrete plants on the base have operated around the clock for 18 months to keep up with the construction needs."
The base already boasts fast food favorites Burger King, a combination Pizza Hut/Bojangles, and Popeyes as well as a day spa and shops selling jewelry, cellphones and, of course, Afghan rugs. In the near future, notes Pincus, "the military is planning to build a $30 million passenger terminal and adjacent cargo facility to handle the flow of troops, many of whom arrive at the base north of Kabul before moving on to other sites." In addition, according to the Associated Press, the base command is "acquiring more land next year on the east side to expand" even farther.
To handle the influx of troops already being dispatched by the Obama administration (with more expected once the president decides on his long-term war plans) "new dormitories" are going up at Bagram, according to David Axe of the Washington Times. The base's population will also increase in the near future, thanks to a project in progress recently profiled in the Freedom Builder, an Army Corps of Engineers publication: the MILCON Bagram Theatre Internment Facility (TIF) currently being built at a cost of $60 million by a team of more than 1,000 Filipinos, Indians, Sri Lankans and Afghans. When completed, it will consist of 19 buildings and 16 guard towers designed to hold more than 1,000 detainees on the sprawling base, which has long been notorious for the torture and even murder of prisoners within its confines.
http://www.salon.com/...
Mostly quotes I know but recs appreciated to get the word out.