A report by a US Congressional commission reveals that the Pentagon has squandered billions of dollars of taxpayer money in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Commission on Wartime Contracting has lambasted the US Department of Defense (DoD) in its latest report for the misuse of over $30 billion on contracts and grants in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bloomberg reported Monday.
The report is scheduled to be submitted to the Congress on Wednesday.
Christopher Shays and Mark Thibault, co-chairmen of the bipartisan commission, report that “major changes in law and policy" will be required to prevent such an amount of waste in future conflicts.
The commission has accused the Pentagon of giving out military contracts without “effective competition,” saying that its shoddy management of the task has caused the waste of at least one in every six dollars of the $192.5 billion spent on leases and grants in Afghanistan and Iraq from fiscal year 2002 to the middle of 2011.
Expenditures are expected to climb to $206 billion by the end of this fiscal year on September 30, according to released figures.
An additional $30 billion “could again turn into waste if the host governments are unable or unwilling to sustain US-funded projects after our involvement ends,” the report adds.
The US military has increasingly relied on private companies since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, with the number of contractors in the war zones at times exceeding that of deployed military forces.
In 2010, the US government increased its military spending by 2.8 percent to $698 billion -- about six times as much as China, the second-greatest military spender -- followed by Britain, France and Russia, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The US government has reportedly spent over $1 trillion in taxpayer money on its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Some experts estimate indirect costs, such as interest payments on the additional government debt, exceed the direct costs.
No comments:
Post a Comment