(Updated: Originally posted December 4, 2006)
I knew it wouldn't last. Relevant portions extracted.
Looks like someone has been making a good buck training the Afghan cops.
A name you may recognize, readers. I wish I had invested in them.
"Panel Faults U.S.-Trained Afghan Police" by JAMES GLANZ and DAVID ROHDE
Five years after the fall of the Taliban, a joint report by the Pentagon and the State Department has found that the American-trained police force in Afghanistan is largely incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work, and that managers of the $1.1 billion training program cannot say how many officers are actually on duty or where thousands of trucks and other equipment issued to police units have gone.
O.K. So that's a year ago, and the Taliban is now rising. WTF?
Additional problems needed to be investigated, including the quality of private contractors and the cost and effectiveness of relying on them to train the police officers. In particular, the experts questioned why the report focused on United States government managers and only glancingly analyzed the performance of the principal contractor in Afghanistan, DynCorp International of Virginia.
Most of the $1.1 billion the United States has spent on the training program in Afghanistan has gone to DynCorp, a technical services company based in Falls Church, Va., with 14,000 employees in about 33 countries. DynCorp also won the largest part of the training work in Iraq; it received a total of $1.6 billion for its training and security work in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2004, 2005 and 2006 fiscal years, according to Gregory Lagana, a company spokesman. The work accounted for roughly 30 percent of the company’s revenue during those years. In May, the company raised $375 million in an initial public offering of its stock.
There are your CORPORATE WAR PROFITEERS!
Here is the story of the BENEFICIARIES of such largess, including a village that was recently highlighted as a NATO defeat.
"At Least 3 Die in Afghanistan as Bombing Incites Shooting" by CARLOTTA GALL
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 3 — British troops opened fire on civilians in the southern city of Kandahar on Sunday, after a suicide bomber rammed a minibus into their military convoy, wounding three soldiers and setting a vehicle on fire, officials and witnesses said.
At least three people were killed and 15 wounded in the bombing and the shooting afterward, hospital officials said. By late evening, Reuters was reporting that as many as eight people had been killed.
The bomber struck around 11 a.m. on the main road through the city. One military vehicle was ablaze as a helicopter lifted out the wounded soldiers. As crowds and cars started pushing to get past the blocked road, the troops, fearing a second suicide attack, opened fire on at least one civilian vehicle that did not obey hand signals to keep back. At least one person was killed and one was wounded.
Witnesses said that up to 10 people had been wounded by NATO gunfire. Six or seven people were killed or wounded by the bomb blast, relatives said.
Tell it!
Dost Muhammad, 35, who was at the Kandahar city hospital looking after his cousin, Abdul Khaliq, 30, who he said had been wounded by British soldiers:
“My cousin and I were on the way from Nelgham village to the city in a taxi when British troops came along. Our driver reduced his speed and tried to stop on the side of the road, and the British came very near and started firing. My cousin and the driver were shot by them. I saw six other men shot by them.”
Qassim Alokozai, 25, a shopkeeper:
“I saw a Town Ace minibus was moving very slowly just as a British convoy came near to it and it exploded. After that I was trying to get myself away from the area because the British started firing on local people. The British took out the injured men from the damaged vehicle, and after that they left their vehicle and escaped.”
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the suicide attack, a spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmedi, told The Associated Press by telephone.
Why didn't they add the usual "couldn't confirm his credibility" like they have in the past?
I think we all know why!
Meanwhile, the beautiful people of Musa Qala were punished Saturday night for a recent cease-fire and defeat of NATO forces recently:
NATO forces on a routine patrol in the Musa Qala district of Helmand Province fought with insurgents for four hours on Saturday night, a NATO statement said Sunday. British troops had negotiated a cease-fire with the Taliban and local tribal elders there in recent weeks, but called in airstrikes against the insurgents on Saturday."
Damned western imperialists!!! I'm not only outraged, but saddened!!!
When will this barbarity we are inflicting on the world end?
And that was ONE YEAR AGO, readers!
We have done so much more damage in just the last year!
Killed so many. Why?
