US taxpayer money transferred to the Taliban is their second biggest cash score next to opium-CBS News

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8/31/11, "U.S. money is Taliban's No. 2 revenue source," CBS News, David Martin

"The commission was told that except for the opium harvest, U.S. contracts were the Taliban's biggest source of funds. A separate investigation estimated $360 million has ended up in the hands of the taliban..

The sheer volume of spending -- as many as 260,000 contractors on the payroll at any one time -- amid the chaos of war was simply too much for the U.S. to manage.

A $60 million project to distribute seeds and fertilizer to Afghan farmers became a $360 million cash for work program "paying villages for what they used to do voluntarily." The commission also warned of massive new waste. For instance, there is a planned $82 million Afghan defense university that the government of Afghanistan cannot afford to keep up.

"What is the point of spending hundreds of millions on projects that will then fall into disuse?" asks commission member Dov Zakheim.

The commission warned that, without a major overhaul of wartime contracting,

• we can expect more of the same as the wars drag on."...

via WZ