Contractors in Afghanistan – Moon of Alabama

June 2, 2009

Contractors in Afghanistan

According to a Department of Defense report during the first quarter of the year there were 68,197 DoD contractors working in Afghanistan.

Those were 9,378 U.S. citizens, 7,043 from other foreign countries and 51,776 Afghans.

Only 4,373 of those people, mostly Afghans, were working as security contractors.

In total there are a lot more DoD contractors than U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. What are they doing? Serving tea?

Posted by b on June 2, 2009 at 18:08 UTC | Permalink

Comments

I’m guessing this is the Surge in action and that those contractors are the tribal chiefs in each village. Hopefully some of that money is going to build human infrastructure like wells or even better roads would be a benign dual use.

Posted by: scott | Jun 2 2009 21:15 utc | 1

If this is correct a lot of them are building roads and clearing mines. Some are building prisons…
http://defensebaseactblog.com/2008/09/17/department-of-defense-increasing-presence-of-civilian-contractors-in-afghanistan/

Posted by: dh | Jun 2 2009 21:44 utc | 2

Hahaha… we wanted a frog march, and all we got was a fog march. Like seeing the tea stain angel, or Jesus in a spoon, this has indeed, been like masturbating into a scrying mirror.
This is not schadenfreude, I’m not saying, “I told you so”, but as the saying goes, “Most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all.” Then there are those blinded by hope. Which I can not condemn as it is highly potent and long acting. Simulacra is where the representation replaces the represented. We’ve been had by, Military psychobiology.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 2 2009 22:03 utc | 3

Apparently, they’re wasting money.

Posted by: Jeremiah | Jun 2 2009 23:47 utc | 4

Anybody wanna build a road in Afghanistan?

Posted by: Jeremiah | Jun 2 2009 23:53 utc | 5

Maybe contractors are serving tea to top military brass while they’re busily blogging away on Facebook. But I think it’s more the case that contractors are passing out psychotropics to grunts on the frontline in order to keep their wits about them, so they don’t end up on the funny farm.;~)

Posted by: Cynthia | Jun 3 2009 0:49 utc | 6

there’s been no detailed public accounting of where the money has gone and how effectively it’s being spent.

Hahaha…there’s been no detailed public accounting of where the (trillions of) money has gone and how effectively it’s being spent in USA …let alone Afghanistan and Iraq.
It all is a bad joke today…People all around the world will pay greatly.Unemployment , scraping of rights and services.
Here in Australia we may very well lose our Medicare system in following years for example…
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/

Free public healthcare in Australia may disappear in the next five years and be replaced by a US-style system, NSW Health director-general Debora Picone says.

Bloody mafia.

Posted by: vbo | Jun 3 2009 3:37 utc | 7

Terrorists in Swat using American and Indian made weapons
Briefing reporters about the progress of operation Rahe Rast, Pakistani military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas yesterday revealed the extent of foreign support that the TTP terrorists are getting from Afghanistan. Large caches of weapons of USA and INDIAN origin have been found as the security forces completely secure control of Mingora city, destroying various training centres of terrorists and killing important militant commanders, the military said.
—
“The US military has lost track of about 222,000 weapons shipped to Afghanistan since 2001, a leaked report compiled by the US Government Accountability Office revealed. The report shows that the US military failed to keep proper records of 87,000 rifles, pistols, mortars and other weapons sent to Afghanistan between December 2004 and June 2008. It also failed to track 135,000 weapons donated to Afghan security by 21 other countries.” [1]
“Stuff happens, and an administration has to be able to respond to that and we did,” Cheney told CNN’s “State of the Union.”[2]
[1] – http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5721162.ece
[2] – Dick Cheney speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union”, March 15, 2009
Nice of the Pakistani’s to blame the Afghans for the CIA:ISI sponsored Taliban having stashes of USA-made weapons that DoD lost track of!!!
That must be what those other 5,000 US mercenaries are busy doing in Kabul, selling USA arms to the Taliban enemy through Pakistani back channels.
You would think that would really piss off USA soldiers in the field.
You would think someone would, oh, you know, frag the merc.

Posted by: Moron “Turrists” | Jun 3 2009 23:22 utc | 8

U$3) Couldn’t have said it better!
Was watching National Propaganda Radio, now on cable TV, of course, interviewing a Marine General about Abu Ghraib, torture and how to deal with these pro-Caliphate terrorists from a pro-Papacy perspective. The ‘balanced’ commentary was provided by a ‘Usama Lama Dingdong’ nobody ever heard of from *America Enterprise Institute*, and what you ended up with was one of those Hugh Downes late-night colonic-cleanser call-and-response tent revival shows, the General chomping his cigar, saying how we have to kick some Tango ass, and ULD waving his hands and lilting his head, ooooh, wouldn’t it be better if the US occupied Iraq for the next thirty years, so there wouldn’t be that kind of terrorism, and no need for more Tango ass in Abu Ghraib.
The moderator gave a look into the camera like a drowning fish, then happied up and made it sound, best he could, like a real debate, instead of a Tijuana pony show.
But figured that I’d give them another chance, then sure enough, today they had some OTHER Army General this time, talking to some scripted moderator on ‘American Exceptionalism’, and how Defense USA™ is “trying to keep up with American greed and their innate desire to have everything for cheap”, blaming this whole clusterfucked SNAFUBAR on the American people themselves! And I was driving down the freeway just about into S______, you know at those North-South lanes with the barricades? But I was screaming so hard at the radio, when I looked up, I almost clipped one of them.
Wow! But what else can we expect today? Bernanke’s lying, Geithner’s lying, Obama’s lying, the whole gol-dang Congress is on perpetual vacation from reality, the stock market pundits are making those house-flipper ads look like a Mormon call to prayer.
G-d help USA, Cheney may keep up his An Incontinent Obfuscation til 2012 elections!
Reagan gave NSA permission to engage in domestic propaganda after Iran-Contra, and now this year NSA got $20B to burn on psyops. I’m sure 1% of that went to National Propaganda Radio under the “1% for the Arts” Program, which is cut everywhere else.
The only good part is, once you know the script, you can identify the walking dead.
A friend keeps sending me “Happy Up” spam that’s clogging his in-box, more and more every day, as credit card usury approaches what used to get usurers burnt at the stake, as gold bugs scream hyperinflation, and monetizers scream stagflation, and as we get these bizarre Bloomberg pump-and-dump pablum pieces like:
Employment Situation Shows Improvement!
The US Department of Labor newly unemployed numbers for May were 532,000 layoffs, considerably less than the 600,000 expected by Dow Jones “economists”. The DOW promptly responded to the ‘improving economic numbers’ by soaring 180 points!
!Good Job Men!™
Lot told his wife not to look back when they’d escaped the burning Tower of Babel.
We are all turned to salt!

Posted by: Druid Dowser | Jun 3 2009 23:58 utc | 9

Uh,oh…
German Government Turns Blind Eye to US Base in Mannheim, Germany
German base used to detain, without trial, US troops refusing to deploy to AF
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/05/28/us-soldier-the-us-govt-has-deceived-not-only-the-american-public-but-also-the-international-community.html
“Since the Obama administration refuses to investigate and prosecute the previous administration, it’s clear to me that the Obama administration is an accomplice to the previous administration’s crimes. They’re setting a very dangerous precedent for the future of the world, something I don’t want to see.
Obama has the backing of the international corporations. And the people who gave him the most money are the ones whose interests are going to be served first. And it’s quite obvious. He won’t go after the prior administration for the war crimes; he won’t pull out of Iraq. He’s leaving 50,000 soldiers to conduct combat missions in Iraq permanently. That means the war is continuing. He wants to escalate the war in Afghanistan. These things show me that Barack Obama is not going to change.”
Uh-oh…

Posted by: Mannheim Gulag | Jun 4 2009 22:23 utc | 10

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