As the Taliban probes the strength of Afghan forces, they are finding it an easier task than anticipated with a sizable number of the Afghan force constituted of “ghost soldiers.” As much as half of the soldiers in frontline positions are missing. We previously discussed the same problem of “ghost soldiers” in Iraq who are paid soldiers but only exist on paper as part of the widespread corruption of that country. The Taliban are finding forward positions with only half of the troops claimed on paper. Something tells me that these same Afghan officers and officials will claim that, while the real soldiers perished at their under-manned outposts, their “ghost soldiers” somehow miraculously survived and will continue to fight . . . and draw pay.
Now, after pocketing money for years, Afghan officials are calling forth nonexistent soldiers to defend their country — a perfect embodiment of the hopes of a country betrayed by its own leaders.
Senior policy and army officials have left their country in peril due to their insatiable greed. It turns out that the Taliban uses real soldiers. Estimates put the percentage of nonexistent soldiers at 40 percent of the Afghan army, a shocking level of corruption even for Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, a ghost army did not fare well and the Taliban has now seized some 65 percent of Helmand province — Afghanistan’s largest. The provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, could fall.
We have been discussing for years how the United States tolerated and even fostered corruption in Afghanistan. I have previously written about the waste of billions of dollars by the government without any significant discipline of government officials. We have become accustomed to reports of unimaginable corruption and waste in Afghanistan from bags of money delivered to officials to constructing huge buildings immediately torn down to buying aircraft that cannot be used to buildings that seem to “melt away”. Much like our useless campaign against poppy production where we continued to spend billions because no one had the courage to end or change the program.
What I am waiting for is the slew of family and funeral expense claims for “ghost soldiers” killed in the offensive by these same corrupt Afghan officers and officials.
Source: AP
Are these soldiers like the dead people that vote in our elections?
Here we go with the monumentally boring Po-Karen feud. Am I right?
Take a seat, Hild, this love affair ain’t ending soon! This the type of romance Shakespeare made his name on.
L’Observer:
“We can only hope that the next one of your relatives that is forced to suffer the tortures of Medicaid first seeks your advice so you can advise them that it is better to die painfully and alone in the cold before allowing them to be signed up for Medicaid.” Mocking the death of a beloved handicapped girl who died of brain tumors is just about as low as it’s possible to go. I remarked that if we cut the fraud, we’d have more money to spend on those on Medicaid. And mocking her death is your response.
That’s disgusting.
LÓbserver
You are experiencing phase 4 of karen’s methodology:
————-
4- When shown her deception/fallacious argument, she ALWAYS responds with a red herring, the bones of which she then uses to attack the challenger.
Watch out for phase 5:
5- When further challenged, she accuses her challenger of making claims he never made, and when asked to support those claims, she just disappears and reappears on another thread, ready to start the cycle anew.
Afghan Positions Being Overrun By Taliban Due To Nonexistent “Ghost Soldiers” Used To Funnel Money To Corrupt Afghan Officials
The Taliban and Afghan National Army soldiers may even in some instances be one in the same with some Taliban collecting government pay as a ghost or part time soldier.
Where have we seen this charade before?
Forty years ago in Vietnam a country where unexploded US bombs/landmines and the toxins related to the US Agent Orange chemical warfare program will be killing/maiming people for decades to come. The place where war criminals within the US government murdered millions of people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia via free-fire zones and saturation bombing campaigns during what the Vietnamese refer to as the:
“War Against the Americans to Save the Nation”.
Paragraph below excerpted from:
Corruption
It has been estimated that as much as 25 percent of ARVN’s military payroll was in the name of dead or deserted soldiers who were kept on the roll so that corrupt officers could collect their salaries.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/vietnam/rvn-corruption.htm
Or, more recently in Iraq from Reuters:
Iraq says it found 50,000 ‘ghost soldiers’ on payroll
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-soldiers-idUSKCN0JF2RZ20141201
How many times can Americans be bamboozled into supporting criminal wars?
Persona, as many times as there are those too blind, deaf and mute to see evil and speak it, to see the log in our common eye and point at it…meanwhile they keep yelling the platitude of all empires before they collapse…””support the troops.””
Oh Karen. Thank you so much for pointing out my unforgivable lapse in not citing the many, many flaws and corruptions of Medicaid. Indeed, it is yet another program to help ‘the poor’ but so perfectly described by the kindly and ever so compassionate Dr. Carson as being worse than slavery. It is so sad that you only learned of their chronic stupidity and incompetence after your relative died. We can only hope that the next one of your relatives that is forced to suffer the tortures of Medicaid first seeks your advice so you can advise them that it is better to die painfully and alone in the cold before allowing them to be signed up for Medicaid.
BTW. I understand there is a government program that provides care for blind children. I’m counting on you to search your files for another good friend or relative or even the random stranger at the corner grocery that has suffered great harm while under the care of this program. Would you please, please share that story with us so we can know the full extent of the waste and fraud that festers in the hearts of liberals.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/us-dropped-23144-bombs-muslim-majority-countries-2015
Jake – “I don’t like the Taliban. So there!”
So kill them?
Yeah, I no longer wonder why we are so hated around the world.
Paul C – No, nothing new, I’m just more disgusted than ever at the blood lust of the United States. It was just a week ago or so when the poll came out showing 30% of Repos and 12% of Demos wanted to bomb Agraba.
How many times have we heard “suspected Terrorists” has been killed? How many times has “suspected terrorist” turned out to be a grandmother in her garden? A kid on a bike? A wedding party? A hospital run by Doctors Without Borders? Why the desire to kill people different than you? I just don’t get it.
Oh, and let me point out the flaw in the reasoning of those against the reform of social services.
The vast majority of people, including conservatives, agree that there are two groups of people receiving various social benefits – those who deserve it and those who defraud or take advantage of the system. Most people agree with supporting those who need it, including those on hard times and the handicapped. These are the very people these benefit systems were designed to help. It is also universally acknowledged that there are those who game the system, and those who could work but refuse to. You know, the people pretending to have a bad back while they go out bowling or moving furniture. Those who could work but would rather stay home on their parents’ couch and play video games.
And then there are those stuck in between. Tragically, you can be worse off in some cases when you go back to work, if you lose your free day care, subsidized health insurance, or other benefits, so your net is lower.
Reforms aim at reducing the fraud, as well as helping people transition off of Welfare. The Welfare rolls shrunk under work requirements, and swell without them. If someone tries to find a job, but they can’t with a bad economy, I absolutely support helping them. No one should die in the hedgerows in the US.
And yet anytime reform is mentioned, Liberals try to stop the discussion with the you don’t care about the poor routine, which is nonsense.
A relative of mine was handicapped, and died while using Medicaid. I was shocked and appalled at the various things that Medicaid would not pay for. For instance, she had a feeding tube, and her doctor required a particular medicine to be liquid, obviously, to be administered through her feeding tube since she could not physically swallow. Medicaid refused to pay for it, because the medicine was available in a pill form, which could be crushed and dissolved. They got a note from her doctor that such a solution would clog her feeding tube, and require repeated surgeries to clear it, and they got nowhere. Because it was administered by an unaccountable bureaucrat and not a doctor. The cuts made to Medicaid since then, because of Obamacare, would have further reduced her care.
If we save money by removing as much fraud and waste as we can, then we have more money to spend on those who these systems were designed to help.
L’Observer – Sigh. I keep wondering when the world will call so I can solve all its problems, but they never do. Perhaps if I bought a red phone…
🙂
L’Observer – I do appreciate your humor. But you cannot possibly be defending the fraud and negligence that occurred in the VA. My main problem is that the government is unaccountable. If this happened in a private hospital, the lawyers would sue them into the stone age. And then chisel off the cave art to be auctioned off. But when it’s the government, there’s really nothing you can do. The same people get to keep their jobs, get to keep their incredible raises. It’s like the DMV. You’re free to make a complaint which will be responded to on January the 32 of 20Never.
The government procurement system is broken, as we overpay and contracts under deliver, and no one is ever held accountable. Thanks to government unions, many employees are virtually un-fireable. They can twiddle their fingers in front of their face and get paid the same as those who put in their best effort every day.
You must not ignore the vast body of evidence of bloated government inefficiency, and hope that a miracle will somehow happen and the government will somehow become a smoothly efficient machine managing health care. If you don’t like how we manage our taxpayer money in Afghanistan, why would they act any different in managing our money for healthcare? Clearly evidence of rampant fraud and corruption did not make any affect in their policy. Clearly there is no accountability. And just as clearly lack of accountability would be detrimental in a single payor system.
Less is more. Bureaucratic creep is bad.
I accept my fate. Who could compete with the brilliance of Paul C and Karen. Your neurons are enough to light the heavens for eternity. No wonder those jury panels are so anxious for your opinions. However do you keep Kraft foods kitchens from interrupting your meditations?
L’Observer – don’t eat Kraft foods, so I don’t have to worry about them. However, I do meditate.
Good grief, no, Paul. All those vets (how many are they?) should be admitted to hospitals immediately. Time for those lazy nurses to toss out all those vets who are presently filling those beds. Out with them! They are just stooges of the present administration!
L’Observer – there is nothing I like better than an ignorant apologist for the administration. Welcome aboard.
And Social Security! When will we eliminate the misery of this program which is as bad as slavery? It only makes the old and infirm dependent. They want the nobility of work – they are anxious to use those boot straps. Are Paul C and Karen willing to take on yet another burden? I’ll understand if they are unable, given all the other programs they need to destroy. But the rest of us should not lose heart. Set up a gofundme page!
L’Observer
I thought it was only in Canada and other rabidly socialist countries that people were dying on government administered health care systems. This can’t be happening here in the land of the Humvee, Cadillac, Town Car, etc. Pick your illusion and throw money at it, or learn from what’s going on, gone on, will be going on, around you.
Karen and Paul C are on to something. Once they stop vets dying because of the VA, I hope they will take on Medicare. I have personally known 10 people who died while on Medicare. It is a horror and we ought to end Medicare immediately. I am hopeful Karen and Paul will soon take on that cause. And once death is eliminated for Medicare patients, it will be time to take on the root cause. Do you realize that thousands of people are dying in hospitals each year? How can we stand silently by while such carnage is taking place under this corrupt administration? Once God and the Republicans are made aware of these massacres and they are given all the tools of power, we can all expect all the freedom and liberty as promised by our founding fathers – eternal life and the end of food stamps.
L’Observer – snotty as you comment is, are you against stopping vets dying while on the waiting list to get into the hospital? Speeding up the waiting list, so to speak? You opposed to that? You opposed to keeping vets alive? Old people alive? Old and infirm dependent? The VA has the money, they are just not using it correctly.