SIGAR – Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction May 2015 SIGAR-15-57-SP $36 Million Command and Control Facility at Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan: Unwanted, Unneeded, and Unused
“SIGAR found that DoD requested funds for this facility on the basis that it was necessary to address an immediate operational need associated with the military surge in Afghanistan in 2010. However, then-Major General Richard P. Mills, the general in charge of the surge in Helmand, requested that the facility not be built because it was not needed; existing resources at Camp Leatherneck were already well-suited to the mission he had been assigned. However, the request to cancel the building was rejected by then-Major General Peter M. Vangjel, who believed that it would not be “prudent” to cancel a project for which funds had already been appropriated by Congress. Ultimately, construction of the building was not completed until long after the surge was over, and the building was never used. The failure to follow General Mills’ advice to cancel the 64K building resulted in the waste of about $36 million.”
- See also via ProPublica – Money as [a Bottomless Pit] How U.S. Commanders Spent $2 Billion of Petty Cash in Afghanistan – “During a decade of war, the Pentagon gave more than $2 billion to commanders to spend as they wished on a broadly defined grab bag of “urgent humanitarian” needs. The goal was to gain support from the locals for both the U.S. military and the nascent Afghan government. It was, the military said: “money as a weapons system.”
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