Posted on 12/03/2015 6:21:11 AM PST by huldah1776
U.S. taxpayers spent $150 million building fancy, hotel-like "villas" staffed with private security for government employees working in Afghanistan rather than having them live on U.S. military bases at a fraction of the cost, according to the top government watchdog charged with monitoring wartime waste.
The lead oversight team auditing U.S. spending in Afghanistan said Thursday the Pentagon's Task Force for Stability and Business Operations spent 20 percent of its budget on private housing and security guards for a "handful" of employees who could have lived on U.S. military bases for little or no extra charge.
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A former TFBSO employee, who spoke to FoxNews.com on condition of anonymity, described the villas as hangouts for senior DOD officials who traveled to Afghanistan, "simply to accumulate flying miles."
"They just came in and didn’t do anything but hang out in the villa," the source said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
AND on the taxpayers dime...
We can’t expect bureaucrats to live like government employees!
I was a government employee in AFG. I spent my three deployments in Shkin and Khowst. Didn’t see that where I was.
Why should the DOD be any different from any other government branch? Have you seen any of the newly constructed government buildings recently??? They look like palaces. The government really is turning into the ruling class.
You see, this way they could avoided the pedophiles. Pampered Princes. Meanwhile, they forced our boots on the ground to hear and witness horrific child rape then be punished for reporting it or acting to protect the little boys.
‘could avoided’=’could avoid’
(need coffee)
The justification for these villas was to support business investment in rebuilding the economies of Iraq and Afghanistan. They were to provide a place for investors and local businessmen and Government officials to meet. They were run by the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations.
In my opinion, a big part of this story is the long-running culture clash between the Departments of Defense and State. The more Republican-leaning DoD did not trust the committment (and to some degree the competence) of the more Democrat-leaning DoS.
The Bush administration (e.g. Rumsfeld) wanted to get the economies jump started after the invasions, and philosophically preferred to get tycoons in to cut big deals quickly rather than the gradual capacity building approach of the State Department’s USAID (setting up classes on word processing and women’s rights and such). The villas were to provide secure housing for high rollers, and meeting/schmoozing facilities for deal making.
Also, more cynically, some believe that the DoD Task Force was a Republican Party mechanism to get their cronies the inside track on investment opportunities.
I don’t know how successful the TFBSO was in arranging big investments, but they definitely helped the new Afghan and Iraqi Governments to set up their internal Government contracting operations, to get their paralyzed procurement processes going - especially significant in Iraq, where the Government had its own money to spend. Of course, they didn’t need villas for that.
Bottom line: State Department was jealous of DoD’s facilities and wanted them, and thought that DoD was muscling in on the State Department’s area of responsibility (true, but possibly necessary, if partisan hacks would otherwise let the mission drop). So the IG got complaints that this was redundant fraud, waste and abuse. Meanwhile, the State Department operated from palaces and the best buildings in town.
:) thank you! Should have known there was something here more than just a pretty facade. Too bad investors don’t consider roughing it worth it for the boots.
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