Pass The Buck, Troops Are Fucked

If the prospect of sending more troops to prop up a corrupt leader isn't bad enough, we now have something new to get outraged about-- the Taliban in Afghanistan are apparently getting a good chunk of their funding from U.S. taxpayers.

There are reports that the U.S. military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents in Afghanistan to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of military logistics that the U.S. government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. U.S. military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents.

According to Vote Vets, here's how the chain works: The U.S. government pays trucking firms to move supplies around Afghanistan to its rural and far flung outposts. These trucking companies then pay private security contracting firms, operated by druglords, warlords, the Taliban and relatives of senior Afghan Administration officials, or consortiums of any or all of them, for safe passage to American installations. As one American trucking executive said, "The Army is basically paying the Taliban not to shoot at them. It is Department of Defense money."