Military Spent $3 Million On Boats For Landlocked Afghanistan
This is a good item to mention when a right-winger tells you we need more defense spending.
The United States spent more than $3 million on eight patrol boats for the Afghan police, according to an internal audit released Thursday.
That sentence is surprising for a few reasons:
1. Afghanistan is landlocked.
2. Not a single boat has arrived in Afghanistan, even though the purchase was made in 2010.
3. That works out to be more than $375,000 per boat. Similar boats in the United States are typically sold for about $50,000.
D.B. Hirsch is a political activist, news junkie, and retired ad copy writer and spin doctor. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
mea_mark June 12th, 2014 at 12:36 pm
Who made the boats and who got the profits? This sure sounds like corruption to me.
Debra Watkins June 12th, 2014 at 12:51 pm
The rest of the story….??
According to the report from the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the boats were meant to be used to patrol the Amu Darya River running between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. They were bought to move government supplies and “to deter smuggling and illegal entry into Afghanistan,” according to Gen. Harold Greene.
But nine months after the boats were purchased, U.S. and NATO forces decided that the boats wouldn’t be necessary after all. By then, though, it was too late. The U.S. government had already spent $3 million on the boats. Nearly four years later, they are still sitting in storage at a Virginia naval base.
It remains a mystery why the boats were deemed unnecessary so soon after they were bought.
“The list of unanswered questions is particularly troubling given the fact…that this program had been an important national security priority for the Afghan National Security Forces prior to its cancellation,” John Sopko, the inspector general, said in a letter to U.S. military officials.
Millions in U.S. government funds have been misspent in Afghanistan, as the inspector general has noted in a slew of reports over the past year. There was the $34 million military headquarters that sat empty as soon as it was completed — no longer needed because Marines had departed the area. There was the $80 million consulate deemed too unsafe to use after it was finished.
SteveD June 12th, 2014 at 7:46 pm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2359445/Military-dumps-34m-lavish-headquarters-Afghan-base-NEVER-BE-USED-U-S-troops-sent-home.html
Once again, a Monetarily Sovereign government cannot spend wastefully. It is impossible. Of course, the money could and should be spent on what is considered by most folks to be “more productive.” However, rational thinking need not apply to a sovereign currency issuer, up to a certain point of course. That point being inflation. Then the FRB simply increases interest rates as it did in the early 1980’s during the “Carter” inflation. The interest rate increase CURED the inflation. When the federal government spends (note: the federal govt doesn’t actually spend, it simply INSTRUCTS a bank to keystroke an increase in the numbers of the recipient’s bank account. Federal taxes do the reverse.) Those entities getting paid by the federal government always spend or invest that money, again and again, throughout the domestic or worldwide economy (velocity of money).
SteveD June 12th, 2014 at 7:53 pm
Maybe folks getting paid Social Security or doctors receiving Medicare or Medicaid funds also amounts to corruption as well? Sure, corruption exists but most folks who complain about it usually aren’t getting paid by the government themselves or do not understand how federal government spending actually works.
mea_mark June 13th, 2014 at 9:31 am
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid are benefits that help society in general, unnecessary boat building for exorbitant prices to maximize unfair profits for specific individuals is totally different, no real correlation.
Vicky NomoreBullshit Shoquist June 12th, 2014 at 2:18 pm
Problem #1: The Kabul River flows into Pakistan, so one can see a need for these kinds of craft.
Problem #2: Afghanistan does have reservoirs, which could become targets, so, again, one can see the need for boats like these.
Just because a country is land-locked doesn’t mean there’s no waterways that might need patrolling.
As a liberal, I like to warn my fellow liberals to BE WATCHFUL that the liberal media doesn’t give only PART of the story. On the face of it this story is outrageous, but not for the reason that Afghanistan is a land-locked nation, but because none of these boats have been delivered.
Debra Watkins June 12th, 2014 at 3:24 pm
According to the report from the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the boats were meant to be used to patrol the Amu Darya River running between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. They were bought to move government supplies and “to deter smuggling and illegal entry into Afghanistan,” according to Gen. Harold Greene.
But nine months after the boats were purchased, U.S. and NATO forces decided that the boats wouldn’t be necessary after all. By then, though, it was too late. The U.S. government had already spent $3 million on the boats. Nearly four years later, they are still sitting in storage at a Virginia naval base.
SteveD June 12th, 2014 at 7:32 pm
Assuming “wasteful” means “non-productive” or “valueless”, a Monetarily Sovereign government DOES NOT spend wastefully. It’s impossible.
If the federal government were to pay 1000 people $1,000 each to dig a hole and fill it in, most people, ignorant of economics, would claim that’s wasteful. It isn’t.
Sure, THERE ARE MORE PRODUCTIVE USES for that million dollars, than digging a hole and filling it in, but 1000 people now have an additional million dollars to spend. Business and other creditors will receive those million dollars, and they will hire and pay employees, and on and on.
Being Monetarily Sovereign, the government can create dollars endlessly, without collecting taxes and without borrowing endlessly.
Janet Yellen could do a “helicopter” drop of a million dollars in the middle of Times Square, and even that would not be wasted spending. The people scrambling to pick up the dollar bills would spend or save, and either way, benefit the economy.
About the only way federal spending could be considered wasteful is if the dollar bills were dropped into a fire, and even then, the only thing that would be wasted would be the paper. No dollars would be lost. Dollar bills are not dollars. Those easily replaceable “dollars” only represent a dollar. That is what a dollar “bill” or federal reserve “note,” actually means.