Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John F. Sopko sent a
letter earlier this month to the Air Force.
During a trip to Afghanistan, I observed sixteen of the twenty planes in the G222 fleet parked unused on a tarmac at Kabul International Airport (see Figure 1 and 2). I was informed that the other four planes are at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. It has come to my attention that the sixteen G222s at Kabul were recently towed to the far side of the airport and scrapped by the Defense Logistics Agency. I was also informed that an Afghan construction company paid approximately 6 cents a pound for the scrapped planes, which came to a total of $32,000. I am concerned that the officials responsible for planning and executing the scrapping of the planes may not have considered other possible alternatives in order to salvage taxpayer dollars.
Sopko does ask some key questions. Was there any discussion of alternatives (i.e. flying planes out of Afghanistan) and if so–what happened with that? He also asks if they can identify what the end result was–what this metal was used for, were some of the more expensive parts not scrapped and who had them–and why.
VICE goes into some more detail concerning the prevalence of this waste:
...it's only the most recent embarrassment for US officials who have spent billions of dollars in Afghanistan since the US invaded in 2001, including $104 billion on humanitarian relief, reconstruction, and training and equipping the Afghan military, said Neil Gordon, an investigator at the Project on Government Oversight.
"I guess the Afghans don't have people who can fly them," Gordon told VICE News. "A lot of this property goes unused either because the Afghans can't use it, they don't need it, or they can't sustain it with their own effort and money."
Gordon listed other examples of what he estimated was as much as $60 billion in US money wasted in Afghanistan, such as a $34-million, 64,000-square-foot Marine headquarters at Camp Leatherneck in southern Afghanistan that was built even though the military brass said they didn't need it.
It's waste like this that sends us lefties into whirlwinds of anger and frustration and forces conservatives to question everybody's patriotism. Yet, when you are looking at people like
Lamar Smith (R-TX) trying to nip and tuck scientific research budgets for $1000s of dollars here and there, while jeopardizing the actual scientific process; and you are pinching dollars and cents from
our children's education budgets–it becomes profoundly clear that real budget analysis is of no concern to the "fiscally conservative" politician.
If you want to save us some dollars then get rid of real waste, not just social programs you've already cut within inches of their lives.