Tag Archives: USAID

Foreign Policy, Reality Check

Reality Check: Millions Wasted ‘Rebuilding’ Afghanistan

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Seventeen years of wasted taxpayer money and government mismanagement: millions of U.S. dollars spent on projects to rebuild Afghanistan that have not helped the Afghan people.

In some cases, these projects actually put Afghans in danger.

This is a Reality Check you won’t get anywhere else.

A new report shows that the U.S. has spent some $60 million on building totally useless power lines in Afghanistan. The effort, overseen by the army corps of engineers, was intended to help rebuild the country.

As we reported at TruthInMedia.com, the $60 million spent is just part of a $116 million project that was plagued from the start.

Back in 2013, the U.S. army corps of engineers awarded an Afghan company $116 million to design and build phases two and three of the north east power system, or NEPS, in Afghanistan. According to the report, published by SIGAR, or the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the $60 million spent on a power transmission project is, quote, “not operational.”

Not operational, because the contract was poorly written. The afghan government was supposed to buy land in the path of the project, allowing the contractor to build phase. They didn’t, and yet the U.S. army corps of engineers gave the contractor clearances to move ahead with construction.

The result? Power lines built through privately held land, some over residential homes, causing real estate disputes. And there’s more.

The contractor’s approved plans did not include connecting the power transmission project to the power source. The army corps of engineers approved a submittal for a temporary connection, but those plans didn’t match the configuration of the power source. So there’s no way to test, let alone go live, with the project.

If the contractors can’t get the plans right, what about the construction of the project?

Well, according to the report, the project’s power towers foundations are already crumbling. Plus, they were built in loose soil, on embankments that are likely to erode. Near where people live.

So that’s $60 million of U.S. taxpayer dollars wasted on a non-operational project. But this isn’t the first time SIGAR has released troubling reports of government waste.

According to TruthInMedia.com, our government spent $160 million on a failed electronic payment system for the afghan government to collect taxes. SIGAR also identified $93 million spent on “forest” camouflage gear for Afghan troops, when there are very few forests in the country.

The irony here: the USAID published a video in 2011 promoting the NEPS project as a way to create efficiency and reduce cost.

What you need to know is that in the 17 years of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, it’s estimated that our government’s reconstruction effort has cost taxpayers $1 trillion. And the occupation continues.

President Trump authorized a troop surge in Afghanistan, bringing the total number of U.S. military there to 14,000. And that’s just military.

So if our government is willing to waste your tax dollars, endanger people halfway across the globe and put our service men and women at risk, to “create efficiency and reduce cost,” what exactly are they doing for us?

That’s Reality Check. Let’s talk about that, right now, on Facebook and Twitter.

Featured, Foreign Policy, Government Accountability, International, US

Fmr. CIA Director Admits the U.S. Interferes in Foreign Elections

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Washington, D.C. – After the federal indictment of 13 Russian citizens accused of conspiracy to defraud the US, former Bill Clinton-era CIA director James Woolsey took to the media to criticize Russia and frame the narrative surrounding alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election— but in the process, he ended up admitting that the United States meddles in foreign elections “only for good cause and in the interest of democracy.”

After Woolsey declared the dangers of an “expansionist Russia” and saying that the nation “has a larger cyber-army than its standing army,” Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked the former CIA chief:

“Have we ever tried to meddle in other countries’ elections?”

The response by the former head of the CIA was surprisingly candid:

“Oh probably, but it was for the good of the system…” said Woolsey, bringing up examples of US interference in Europe during the late 40’s to “stop the communists from taking over.”

Ingraham then questioned whether the U.S. still interferes in foreign elections, asking, “We don’t do that now though? We don’t mess around in other people’s elections?”

The response by Woolsey clearly intimated that the U.S. continues to interfere in the elections of other sovereign countries:

“Well… mmm.. only for a very good cause… only for a very good cause and in the interests of democracy.”

The Russian embassy in the UK highlighted the commentary by Woolsey, responding: “Says it all.”

[RELATED: US-Backed Secret “Cuban Twitter” Comes Under Criticism]

In fact, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an organ of the US State Department, was kicked out of Russia in 2012 amid accusations that the organization was engaged in more than humanitarian work in Russia, and had sought to “influence the political process, including elections at various levels and civil society,” according to a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman.

At the time, President Vladimir Putin blamed then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for attempting to interfere in the Russian political system through USAID and fomenting protests in Russia. Putin said Clinton “gave them a signal, they heard this signal and started active work.”

Russia is not alone in their suspicions about USAID being used as a tool to manipulate the internal political process of sovereign states, according to a report in The LA Times:

USAID “threatens our sovereignty and stability,” the eight-nation Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas fumed in June in a resolution that accused the United States of political interference, conspiracy and “looting our natural resources.”

The problem is USAID doesn’t just try to boost economies, healthcare and education in poor countries. It also spends about $2.8 billion a year teaching campaign skills to political groups, encouraging independent media, organizing fair elections and funding other grass-roots activities intended to promote democracy and human rights.

Some foreign leaders view those American efforts as thinly veiled attempts to weaken the status quo or even engineer a change of governments.

As the mainstream media vilifies Russia for election interference, which reportedly amounted to highlighting and amplifying preexisting divisions within the social structure of the United States, Woolsey’s words indicate that the United States engages in meddling in other countries’ elections as well.