Support for Afghanistan War Only 39% According to New Poll

[FayeforCure]

Bostech, thanks for adding some interesting points,.............thinga are rarely as they seem, or as they are portrayed by the traditional media.

[Dog Walker]

Time to put on the foil hats guys!  Remember rule #1:  People cannot keep a secret.  These big, far reaching conspiracies by the CIA, Freemason, Elders of Zion, Illuminati, Vatican, aliens at the LeGrange points, are a bunch of bunk.  Somebody would squeal!

There is an old Russian saying from Tsarist times that applies a bit:  "When three people get together to talk conspiracy, two are fools and one is a police spy."

[BridgeTroll]

Bostech, thanks for adding some interesting points

They ARE... um... er... "interesting". 

[Bostech]

Yeah,except CIA agent themselves dont know what they are doing most of time,they just follow orders.

Sort of like Al Qaida where they keep their soldiers only on need to know basis.Top leadership gives orders to soldiers who followed them regardless if they understand why and how.
Exactly how typical US soldier fight in Iraq and Afghanistan but doesnt know exactly why,except its for "democracy".
Al Qaida fights for "Allah" and US soldiers for "democracy",rest of "details" they dont need to know.

[Bostech]

and simple understanding of military,US military is largest and best equiped and trained (well maybe not trained) military in world while Talibans/Al Qaida are bunch of barefoot,uneducated peasants who learned fighting...from CIA.
US has trillions of dollars worth millitary budget and entire equipment,decades of experience,all sort of branches of millitary from regular soldiers,special units,undercover spies etc and not to forget 42 countries as "allies" while Talibans/Al Qaida number 40,000 to 2 million soldiers (depends what day you watch Fox News),$15342 budget,fleet of Toyota pickup trucks,invisible shield which makes them blend into mountains,trained by CIA,occasional access to Internet over dial-up.

Somehow US army is not able to win against Talibans and Al Qaida.
Somehow we have to spend BILLIONS of dollars for fight while Al Qaida can do it for pennies on dollar.
Somehow they have better intelligence,military knowledge and strategy then US military.
Somehow Talibans can turn Roomba vacuum cleaner into super deadly flying WMD whatever weapon while US spends billions on dollars on Raptors and cant do damn thing with it.

[Bostech]

And talk about secrets,take example of "housing bubble".
Few people were warning about burst,but they were laughed by "experts",only to find out those few were right after all.And entire country followed housing craze 'till last moment.
Even zombies sometimes stop and look around before they proceed.

[Sportmotor]

Both places secured,Pakistan government is US controlled anyway and only Iran is left to be taken care of.

umm...Can I have whatever you are smoking please?

[jaxnative]

He smoking CIA supplied Afghani red-bud.  Special chemicals added to control minds.  No one immune except special few who have insight into mind of world control.....or.., something like that.

[Bostech]

Talibans got no budget problems,their soldiers don't fatigue,they train using "telepathy",they got no Tiger Woods,they can live without food and water for weeks and even that US military have been killing Talibans "by hundreds" every few weeks for past 7 years they can clone themselves in no time.
Super soldiers,they even say they killed entire squad of Predators,Arnold himself only got one.

[FayeforCure]

Published on Friday, December 18, 2009
Stunning Statistics About the War Every American Should Know

Contrary to popular belief, the US actually has 189,000 personnel on the ground in Afghanistan right nowâ€"and that number is quickly rising.
by Jeremy Scahill

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.

DynCorp instructor with police recruits in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan, June 2008. In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. (File image via TPM)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 armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000."

At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors.

That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that's right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.

The US has spent more than $23 billion on contracts in Afghanistan since 2002. By next year, the number of contractors will have doubled since 2008 when taxpayers funded over $8 billion in Afghanistan-related contracts.

Despite the massive number of contracts and contractors in Afghanistan, oversight is utterly lacking. "The increase in Afghanistan contracts has not seen a corresponding increase in contract management and oversight," according to McCaskill's briefing paper. "In May 2009, DCMA [Defense Contract Management Agency] Director Charlie Williams told the Commission on Wartime Contracting that as many as 362 positions for Contracting Officer's Representatives (CORs) in Afghanistan were currently vacant."

A former USAID official, Michael Walsh, the former director of USAID's Office of Acquisition and Assistance and Chief Acquisition Officer, told the Commission that many USAID staff are "administering huge awards with limited knowledge of or experience with the rules and regulations." According to one USAID official, the agency is "sending too much money, too fast with too few people looking over how it is spent." As a result, the agency does not "know ... where the money is going."

The Obama administration is continuing the Bush-era policy of hiring contractors to oversee contractors. According to the McCaskill memo:

In Afghanistan, USAID is relying on contractors to provide oversight of its large reconstruction and development projects.  According to information provided to the Subcommittee, International Relief and Development (IRD) was awarded a five-year contract in 2006 to oversee the $1.4 billion infrastructure contract awarded to a joint venture of the Louis Berger Group and Black and Veatch Special Projects.  USAID has also awarded a contract Checci and Company to provide support for contracts in Afghanistan.

The private security industry and the US government have pointed to the Synchronized Predeployment and Operational Tracker(SPOT) as evidence of greater government oversight of contractor activities. But McCaskill's subcommittee found that system utterly lacking, stating: "The Subcommittee obtained current SPOT data showing that there are currently 1,123 State Department contractors and no USAID contractors working in Afghanistan." Remember, there are officially 14,000 USAID contractors and the official monitoring and tracking system found none of these people and less than half of the State Department contractors.

As for waste and abuse, the subcommittee says that the Defense Contract Audit Agency identified more than $950 million in questioned and unsupported costs submitted by Defense Department contracts for work in Afghanistan. That's 16% of the total contract dollars reviewed.

[Bostech]

War on terror is big business.
Seems like in this War on Terror,average Americans and muslims around world are only losers,while rich sheiks and wealth Americans are making big bucks,they push their agenda and rules.

Follow the money.

[Dog Walker]

Bos, a famous historian and philosopher once said, "For each of the world's great, complicated problems there is a simple answer.....and it is wrong."  Conspiracies, "follow the money", CIA control, are simple answers to complicated, multi-layered situations.  We humans can hardly organize simple things we all agree on much less manage some huge world spanning plan to fool and cheat all of the world's media, citizens and critics.

[Bostech]

So what do you think its going on?