Free Republic

"Pakistani fertilizer firm to expand in U.S., but balks on controlling bomb materials" SNIPPET: "The Pakistani corporation that has refused the Pentagon’s urgent appeals to control the flow of explosive materials to bomb-makers who kill U.S. troops is expanding its fertilizer manufacturing into the United States. And it is being done with the help of U.S. taxpayers through the municipal bond market."

In February 2006, with roadside bombs killing more and more American soldiers in Iraq, the Pentagon created an agency to defeat the deadly threat and tasked a retired four-star general to run it. Five years later, the agency has ballooned into a 1,900-employee behemoth and has spent nearly $17 billion on hundreds of initiatives. Yet the technologies it has developed have failed to significantly improve U.S. soldiers’ ability to detect unexploded roadside bombs and have never been able to find them at long distances. Indeed, the best detectors remain the low-tech methods: trained dogs, local handlers and soldiers themselves. A...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19, 2007 – If Congress does not come through with a supplemental bill President Bush will sign, money for defeating the largest killers of American personnel in the war on terror will run out Dec. 1, a senior official said here today. Retired Army Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, director of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, told Pentagon reporters that the organization will have to stop funding new initiatives and just maintain operations. “We’re out of (funding) new stuff now; we’re going to have trouble sustaining current contracts after the first of December,” Meigs said. The...