US wasted $30 billion taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan and Iraq over decade, increased corruption in host countries-BBC

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"Beyond just a disservice to taxpayers, the report says that the waste fosters corruption in host countries." In Dec. 2001, bin Laden said the goal was "destruction of the US economy" which "even his own death could not stop."

8/29/11, "US 'wasted $30bn on Afghanistan and Iraq' over decade," BBC, Washington, by Kim Ghattas

"The US government has wasted $30bn (£18bn) in contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last decade, according to a bi-partisan spending commission.

The commission on wartime contracting blamed an over-reliance on contractors, poor planning

• and fraud for the waste.

It had evidence of lax accountability and inadequate competition, it said.

Writing in the Washington Post, the report's authors warn that investments in the two countries

• could be wasted even after US involvement there ends.

Among the examples cited were a $40m prison for Iraq that the country did not want and

• was never completed.

US-funded projects in those two countries also risk going to waste because host governments are unable or unwilling to sustain them.

In one case, $300m was poured into a sophisticated power plant in Kabul which the Afghan government will not be able to run, and a programme worth $11.4bn of facilities for the Afghan National security forces is

• likely to be unsustainable.
  

The commission's report is due to be published on Wednesday but its authors, who include former government officials and lawmakers, have already published an opinion piece in the Washington Post, blaming both the government and contractors for the waste.

The article makes the obvious recommendation to be more rigorous when deciding whether a project should be contracted out but it also recommends cancelling or modifying projects that are not sustainable.

Beyond just a disservice to taxpayers, the report says that the waste fosters corruption in host countries and

• diminishes the standing and influence of the US."

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12/28/01, "Osama: Hit U.S. Economy," NY Daily News, Helen Kennedy

""It is important to concentrate on the destruction of the American economy," Bin Laden says on the 33-minute tape, broadcast in full yesterday by Al Jazeera TV in Qatar. "If their economy ends, they will become too busy to enslave oppressed people."

Bin Laden bragged that the attacks caused losses of "more than a trillion dollars on the New York market and elsewhere."

"This economic hemorrhaging continues until today but requires more blows."...

Bin Laden, 44, said America was on the verge of collapse and that even his own death could not stop it.

"We say that the end of the United States is imminent - whether Bin Laden or his followers are alive or dead - for the awakening of the Muslim nation has occurred," he says on the tape, which was air-mailed anonymously to Al Jazeera from Pakistan."...

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