Pentagon Fraud Over Afghanistan War?

Afghanistan, War, Obama, Pentagon, CIA, NSA, Defense, Iraq, Bush, Blackwater, McCaskill

According to some theories, there may already be a very large amount of troops deployed right now in Afghanistan, contrary to reports. There was also a massive increase in spending in Afghanistan under this administration, surpassing the Bush years.

ConspiracyPlanet says:

 Contrary to popular belief, the US actually has 189,000 personnel on the ground in Afghanistan right now—and that number is quickly rising.

 

A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. 

 

Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” 

That’s not in one war zone – that’s the Pentagon in its entirety.

In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill’s staff, “From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armedprivate security contractors working for the Defense Department inAfghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.

Also, troops are probably going to stay in Afghanistan for a very very long time and this is only the beginning, a Loatay article says:

 

History establishes that it is easier to deploy to than to withdraw from an active war zone.

The White House has already increased U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan from 32,000 at the beginning of the year to over twice that amount – 68,000 – currently, with the first contingent of even more reinforcements arriving this week. The 30,000 additional troops headed to the war front and the 3,000 more support forces pledged by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will push American military personnel in Afghanistan to over 100,000.

That number, likely to be increased yet further and accompanied by a veritable invasion of private military contractors and State Department operatives, will be augmented by over 10,000 more non-U.S. troops serving under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), bringing combined American and NATO regular military forces to well over 150,000 and total Western personnel to over 300,000 with an estimated surge of as many as 56,000 new U.S. contractors. With the addition of assorted security, intelligence, private contracting and other military camp followers from NATO nations, the figure could top a third of a million.

An occupation and warfighting force of those dimensions is not designed for a limited mission or a short stay.

In fact on December 6, U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones (former top NATO military commander in Europe) gave the lie to the 2011 withdrawal anodyne in an interview with CNN when he brashly asserted “We have strategic interests in South Asia that should not be measured in terms of finite times. We’re going to be in the region for a long time.”

Jones also emphasized the extension of the war in space as well as time by stating American reinforcements and redeployments would concentrate on eastern and southern Afghanistan to “eliminate the safe havens” inside Pakistan, a nation with a population of 175 million and nuclear weapons.

His claims, more authoritative than those of the president he serves, were echoed by Pentagon chief Robert Gates. Earlier this week it was reported that “In a visit to the war zone last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Afghanistan’s senior military officials that while the U.S. looks forward to the day when the Afghans can take control of their country, the United States would have a large number of forces in Afghanistan for some time beyond July 2011.”

This comes after $626 billion was allocated to Defense spending on Saturday morning, which the Senate passed, says the Huffington Post:

 

Anchored by a $626 billion Pentagon funding bill, the measure also carries short-term extensions of unemployment benefits, highway and transit funding, key pieces of the anti-terror Patriot Act and a measure to save doctors from shouldering a 21 percent cut in Medicare payments.

 

 

The timing of the 63-33 post-midnight tally – which blocked GOP stalling tactics and forced a final vote to clear the bill for Obama no later than Saturday – was governed more by the brawl over health care than significant opposition to the defense measure or its additional baggage.

 

For a time, Republicans are using every avenue available to them to try to delay or kill the health care legislation, including stretching out debate on the defense measure. The bill passed the House Wednesday by an overwhelming 395-34 vote.