do you even have to ask???
Posted on 11/02/2015 7:29:56 PM PST by Kaslin
Ridiculously overbudget? Check. Unnecessary? Check. Impossible to support in the long run? Check. Zero accountability? Check and double-check. If a novelist wrote this as a satire of government operations, there wouldn’t be an editor who’d buy it — not for 43 cents, and certainly not for $43 million:
Nearly $43 million of U.S. taxpayers’ money was spent on building a gas station in Afghanistan — 140 times more than it should have cost, according to a government watchdog.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) also said that one of the most “troubling” issues is how the Department of Defense was unable or unwilling to explain why the “ill-conceived” project was so expensive.
“Even considering security costs associated with construction and operation in Afghanistan, this level of expenditure appears gratuitous and extreme,” SIGAR said in a report issued Monday. …
“It’s an outrageous waste of money that raises suspicions that there is something more there than just stupidity,” John Sopko, the special inspector general, told NBC News. “There may be fraud. There may be corruption. But I cannot currently find out more about this because of the lack of cooperation.”
Stupidity hardly covers it. I’ve worked on capital projects that ran over budget because of errors, but we’re talking in the 5% range. A 10% overrun in the private sector will get you noticed in all the wrong ways, and anything over that will likely get you fired. This is an overrun of, oh, 14,000%.
And because this is truly a government operation, no one knows anything about it. IG John Sopko went looking for answers, and came up empty — because the project office has already been closed down:
One of the most troubling aspects of this project is that the Department of Defense claims that it is unable to provide an explanation for the high cost of the project or to answer any other questions concerning its planning, implementation, or outcome. In fact, in response to my request for information, the Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Policy stated in June 2015 that the March 2015 closure of TFBSO resulted in the Office of the Secretary "no longer possessing the personnel expertise to address these questions or to assess properly the TFBSO information and documentation retained by WHS in the OSD Executive Archive†(see Appendix I).
In written comments on a draft of this report, the Principal Under Secretary of Defense for Policy did not dispute our facts or findings, or provide any new information. Instead, his comments reiterated his earlier position that because TFBSO closed in March 2015, the Department no longer has the expertise to answer any of SIGAR’s questions about this project or about any other TFBSO activities (see Appendix II).
Frankly, I find it both shocking and incredible that DOD asserts that it no longer has any knowledge about TFBSO, an $800 million program that reported directly to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and only shut down a little over six months ago.
Even more stupidly, the DoD built this as a compressed natural gas refueling station for commercial and personal vehicles. Afghanistan has a mostly untapped wealth of natural gas, and the US wants to push the clean-burning fuel rather than petroleum-based fuel. That sounds great, except that Afghanistan doesn’t have a wealth of CNG-fueled vehicles, nor much wealth for Afghans to either convert their vehicles or buy new vehicles to replace them.
As Sopko discovered, no one apparently thought to look into that problem before sinking $43 million into the gas station:
SIGAR’s May 2015 inquiry letter to DOD requested copies of any feasibility study conducted prior to building the CNG station, but DOD was unable to provide any such document. This is consistent with what SIGAR learned in the field: an engineer working for USAID on CNG projects in Afghanistan told SIGAR that TFBSO did not regularly conduct feasibility studies for their projects.
If TFBSO had conducted a feasibility study of the project, the Task Force might have noted that Afghanistan lacks the natural gas transmission and local distribution infrastructure necessary to support a viable market for CNG vehicles. …
Even if Mazar-e-Sharif were to obtain a reliable supply of natural gas, there is no way to deliver it to small consumers, such as filling stations. Mazar-e-Sharif’s local distribution network is currently defunct and a USAID study estimates that it would cost $50 million to rehabilitate it.
Finally, it appears that the cost of converting a gasoline-powered car to run on CNG may be prohibitive for the average Afghan. TFBSO’s contractor, CADG, states that conversion to CNG costs $700 per car; other sources estimate that it costs up to $800. According to the World Bank, the average annual income in Afghanistan is $690. This may explain why the U.S. Government paid for the conversion of over 120 Afghan vehicles to CNG so that they could use the filling station: ordinary Afghans simply couldn’t afford to do it. Not surprisingly, SIGAR found no evidence that any other vehicles were converted to CNG.
In sum, it is not clear why TFBSO believed the CNG filling station project should be undertaken. In the absence of national or even regional natural gas transmission and local distribution infrastructure to support a network of CNG stations, there is no incentive for motorists to convert their vehicles to CNG. In fact, an economic impact assessment performed at the request of TFBSO found that the CNG filling station project produced no discernable macroeconomic gains and a discounted net loss of $31 million.
With all this in mind, let’s ask the real question in this scandal: where did the $43 million go? It didn’t go into the gas station itself, clearly. This appears to be a slush fund used to channel cash into the hands of cronies in Afghanistan, with a useless gas station built as a cover for it. Sopko certainly seems to suspect that something is up with all of the shoulder shrugging at the DoD, especially given the ridiculous notion of the project itself.
There is an axiom which states that one should never suspect a conspiracy when stupidity provides just as good of an explanation. This case, however, requires so much abject stupidity that it’s difficult to credit all on its own. As Sopko told NBC, the project “raises suspicions that there is something more there than just stupidity.” And this is coming from an expert on government stupidity.
We need to bring back hanging.
Money laundering.
Its on Obama’s watch, so forget it.
Would be interesting to know where the money went, and who all got a cut, but thats crazy talk.
You’ll notice that, caught engaging in naked money laundering, under Obama all they have to say is, no, we aren’t going to answer any of your questions.
And thats the end of it.
It’s disgusting and bi partisan and has been going on for 12 years.
If all the money that was supposed to go into Iraq infrastructure went into it, it would look quite different.
The horrific part is soldiers’ lives were sacrificed for graft.
it disgusts me.
They'll earn it back selling beer, wine and Doritos.
What?
They could have trained 3 more Syrians with that money!
What a waste. They could have paid down what we borrowed from our children. The key is to get the HELL out of Afghanistan. Nobody gives a crap any more. We are BROKE— GET OUT!!
Bingo!
‘World’s Most Expensive Gas Station’ Cost Taxpayers $43M
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3355737/posts
Afghan fuel station cost $43m, US military report says
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3355666/posts
Watchdog Blasts the Pentagon’s $43M Gas Station That Will Fuel Few Cars in Afghanistan
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3355554/posts
do you even have to ask???
They waste 45 million on this boondoggle, and yet the Benghazi investigations which cost a fraction are considered.... wasteful,....
We live in Bearded spock world.
The horrific part is soldiers’ lives were sacrificed for graft.
it disgusts me.
Yep. It’s not just disgusting. It is criminal. To make matters worse, it’s all borrowed money that our kids have to pay back.
it’s sickening. a genius and shrewd negotiator is the only person that can turn back the 200 foot super tidal wave that is coming our way with the debt.
100 percent of gdp.
are we shooting for japan’s 200?
Once again, after many many years of proudly displaying my tagline, the statement prevails perfectly to explain all government spending.
....They could have trained 3 more Syrians with that money!...
Now that’s good.
I remember the good old days when invading the Middle East was going to pay for itself.
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