So, while the residents of the developing world thinks that corruption is non-existent in developed world, the bastion of democracy & honest government in the developed world (US) keeps showing to the world that how much it is a corrupt country.
US unilaterally invades countries & wages wars for one reason only; military & defence industries need more money. Wars in Afghanistan & Iraq, financially helped high-ranking military officials, defence contractors, large businesses involved in defence & military (Raytheon, Lockheed Martin etc.), & of course, all those politicians who not only receive huge sums of money from defence lobbyists, but they also may have personal financial interests with those companies.
Who loses out in these wars? Common foot soldiers who lose their lives, & if not dead, then suffer horrific physical & mental injuries, & of course, the common citizen; the taxpayer.
Common foot soldiers have always been considered expendable by the rich elites, who use them to achieve their own objective; horde more wealth. Romans use to invade neighbouring villages & force the men of those villages to join the Roman army. British & American did the same thing during multiple invasions around the world & Civil War etc., where Indians or African-Americans were forced to fight in wars.
Now, American military uses more sophisticated approach, but the real result is the same. Education is so expensive that poor students think that a few tours of war zones is worth the risk of a free education & boarding. Those poor kids are usually have a non-American background, for example, Latinos or South Asians. They enlist in the army, get trained, go to a foreign country, commit heinous crimes, die or suffer horrific injuries, & come back to America (dead or alive). If alive, American government leaves them alone, to fend for themselves on their own, & all the while, rich elites got their oil & gas contracts (like Halliburton's contracts in Iraq), construction contracts (to build useless facilities like the one profiled in this article), & military & defence contracts to build more weapons or to provide more security to government officials.
The rich business & political elites also don't pay or pay minimal taxes, anyway. Since, they always find some loopholes to get out of paying the government their fair share of being a citizen, somebody else has to pick up the tab. Come the common & poor citizen; the single mother who works multiple shifts to earn enough to support her young family, the hardworking & poor student who works & studies in the hopes of earning a degree one day & making his/her future a bright one, the young couple who tries to earn enough by working multiple shift jobs & seldom seeing each other, just so they can provide all they can to their little family.
Government very regularly, & with strict punctuality, takes taxes from these poor souls, all in the name of providing social benefits to them. But, social benefits are continuously being cut. Those poor citizens don't benefit from those taxes. Those taxes are used as subsidies to large, international businesses to extract more fossil fuels from the ground, to build more weapons for useless wars, & to pay continuously increasing salary packets of career politicians.
Imagine how much American citizens would have benefited from these $36 Millions of their own taxes being used on them as social benefits; how many homeless would've gotten social housing, how many poor kids would've gotten healthy meals with government subsidies, how many poor families would've been able to buy healthy, organic foods for themselves with government subsidies to lower the costs of organic foods, how many poor students would've gotten some help in reducing their education loan (if not completely eliminating those loans) etc.
After all this, the world still thinks American government thinks of its people, first, & then someone else. The world still thinks American government is honest, fair, & free of corruption. The world still thinks America is a land of equality & justice. What America has definitely accomplished is that the world thinks of only great things about America. As someone wise once said that "the Devil's greatest accomplishment was convincing the world that he didn't exist."
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John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), issued a report ... on the construction of the 64,000-square-foot command-&-control facility at Camp Leatherneck in Helmand Province, Afghanistan in 2010. The need to build the facility was justified under plans by President Barack Obama’s administration to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan.
The building was completed in April 2013, despite requests from some senior Pentagon officials to halt construction. According to the investigators, who visited the site, the facility was “well built” & equipped with new furniture.
However, by that time the US had already begun to withdraw its troops – so there was no need for it. "Ultimately, construction of the building was not completed until long after the surge was over, & the building was never used," the report said.
“The building was never occupied & on Oct. 29, 2014, Camp Leatherneck, including the … building, was closed by the US & transferred to the Afghan government,” the Washington Times quoted the report as saying. “In the end, $36 million in US taxpayer funds was spent on a building the US never used.”
The Afghan Army, which has taken over security duties from US-led forces, is not currently using the building. There were various proposals for the facility, including transforming it into a movie theater & fitness club.
Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the top-ranking Democrat on the US Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, who first inquired about the case, said: “This is one of the most outrageous, deliberate, & wasteful misuses of taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan we’ve ever seen.”
Sopko, the special inspector general, published a letter calling for an inquiry into the case in July 2013. The Department of Defense conducted two investigations, accusing those responsible for the project of corruption, as the facility allegedly cost $25 million, instead of $36 million. But nothing followed the inquiry.
“When it was clear this building wouldn’t be used, & when 3 commanders requested its cancellation, the Army not only built it anyway but completely failed to hold any officials accountable after all the facts came to light — so I’ll now be fully expecting answers from the Army,” McCaskill said, McClatchy DC reported.
SIGAR recommends holding to account 3 US officers: General-Lieutenant Peter M. Vangjel “in light of his decision to construct…building over the objections of commanders in the field, resulting in the waste of $36 million,” Army Major General James Richardson because of his “failure to carry out a fulsome investigation” & Army Colonel Norman F. Allen for his attempt to "discourage full cooperation" with the report.
Wars in Iraq & Afghanistan have witnessed many cases of misuse of money by the military. For instance, a police base in an Afghan village built, which cost $500,000 from the US military budget, fell apart 4 months after completion because of faulty construction.
The US has the largest military budget in the world – in 2016 it plans to spend more than $600 billion, & some experts believe that even this figure is underestimated.
US unilaterally invades countries & wages wars for one reason only; military & defence industries need more money. Wars in Afghanistan & Iraq, financially helped high-ranking military officials, defence contractors, large businesses involved in defence & military (Raytheon, Lockheed Martin etc.), & of course, all those politicians who not only receive huge sums of money from defence lobbyists, but they also may have personal financial interests with those companies.
Who loses out in these wars? Common foot soldiers who lose their lives, & if not dead, then suffer horrific physical & mental injuries, & of course, the common citizen; the taxpayer.
Common foot soldiers have always been considered expendable by the rich elites, who use them to achieve their own objective; horde more wealth. Romans use to invade neighbouring villages & force the men of those villages to join the Roman army. British & American did the same thing during multiple invasions around the world & Civil War etc., where Indians or African-Americans were forced to fight in wars.
Now, American military uses more sophisticated approach, but the real result is the same. Education is so expensive that poor students think that a few tours of war zones is worth the risk of a free education & boarding. Those poor kids are usually have a non-American background, for example, Latinos or South Asians. They enlist in the army, get trained, go to a foreign country, commit heinous crimes, die or suffer horrific injuries, & come back to America (dead or alive). If alive, American government leaves them alone, to fend for themselves on their own, & all the while, rich elites got their oil & gas contracts (like Halliburton's contracts in Iraq), construction contracts (to build useless facilities like the one profiled in this article), & military & defence contracts to build more weapons or to provide more security to government officials.
The rich business & political elites also don't pay or pay minimal taxes, anyway. Since, they always find some loopholes to get out of paying the government their fair share of being a citizen, somebody else has to pick up the tab. Come the common & poor citizen; the single mother who works multiple shifts to earn enough to support her young family, the hardworking & poor student who works & studies in the hopes of earning a degree one day & making his/her future a bright one, the young couple who tries to earn enough by working multiple shift jobs & seldom seeing each other, just so they can provide all they can to their little family.
Government very regularly, & with strict punctuality, takes taxes from these poor souls, all in the name of providing social benefits to them. But, social benefits are continuously being cut. Those poor citizens don't benefit from those taxes. Those taxes are used as subsidies to large, international businesses to extract more fossil fuels from the ground, to build more weapons for useless wars, & to pay continuously increasing salary packets of career politicians.
Imagine how much American citizens would have benefited from these $36 Millions of their own taxes being used on them as social benefits; how many homeless would've gotten social housing, how many poor kids would've gotten healthy meals with government subsidies, how many poor families would've been able to buy healthy, organic foods for themselves with government subsidies to lower the costs of organic foods, how many poor students would've gotten some help in reducing their education loan (if not completely eliminating those loans) etc.
After all this, the world still thinks American government thinks of its people, first, & then someone else. The world still thinks American government is honest, fair, & free of corruption. The world still thinks America is a land of equality & justice. What America has definitely accomplished is that the world thinks of only great things about America. As someone wise once said that "the Devil's greatest accomplishment was convincing the world that he didn't exist."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), issued a report ... on the construction of the 64,000-square-foot command-&-control facility at Camp Leatherneck in Helmand Province, Afghanistan in 2010. The need to build the facility was justified under plans by President Barack Obama’s administration to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan.
The building was completed in April 2013, despite requests from some senior Pentagon officials to halt construction. According to the investigators, who visited the site, the facility was “well built” & equipped with new furniture.
However, by that time the US had already begun to withdraw its troops – so there was no need for it. "Ultimately, construction of the building was not completed until long after the surge was over, & the building was never used," the report said.
“The building was never occupied & on Oct. 29, 2014, Camp Leatherneck, including the … building, was closed by the US & transferred to the Afghan government,” the Washington Times quoted the report as saying. “In the end, $36 million in US taxpayer funds was spent on a building the US never used.”
The Afghan Army, which has taken over security duties from US-led forces, is not currently using the building. There were various proposals for the facility, including transforming it into a movie theater & fitness club.
Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the top-ranking Democrat on the US Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, who first inquired about the case, said: “This is one of the most outrageous, deliberate, & wasteful misuses of taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan we’ve ever seen.”
Sopko, the special inspector general, published a letter calling for an inquiry into the case in July 2013. The Department of Defense conducted two investigations, accusing those responsible for the project of corruption, as the facility allegedly cost $25 million, instead of $36 million. But nothing followed the inquiry.
“When it was clear this building wouldn’t be used, & when 3 commanders requested its cancellation, the Army not only built it anyway but completely failed to hold any officials accountable after all the facts came to light — so I’ll now be fully expecting answers from the Army,” McCaskill said, McClatchy DC reported.
SIGAR recommends holding to account 3 US officers: General-Lieutenant Peter M. Vangjel “in light of his decision to construct…building over the objections of commanders in the field, resulting in the waste of $36 million,” Army Major General James Richardson because of his “failure to carry out a fulsome investigation” & Army Colonel Norman F. Allen for his attempt to "discourage full cooperation" with the report.
Wars in Iraq & Afghanistan have witnessed many cases of misuse of money by the military. For instance, a police base in an Afghan village built, which cost $500,000 from the US military budget, fell apart 4 months after completion because of faulty construction.
The US has the largest military budget in the world – in 2016 it plans to spend more than $600 billion, & some experts believe that even this figure is underestimated.
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