This spending "scandal" does not get me worked up about the Obama administration:
The watchdog who tracks the billions of taxpayer dollars spent to rebuild Afghanistan says government officials have tried to silence him because they think he's embarrassing the White House and Afghan President Hamid Karzai by pointing out the waste and fraud.
John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, used a speech at the New America Foundation on Wednesday to blast government “bureaucrats”' who have told him to stop publicizing damning audits that detail case after case of waste, corruption and mismanagement of rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan. Some government officials have even complained that they aren't allowed to pre-screen or edit his reports, he said.
I have no problem with pointing out--and fixing problems. And if there are Americans who are profiting from this illegally, definitely prosecute them.
But let's not get worked up into a moral superiority rant.
Money is ammunition in the Afghanistan war. The objective of spending is to win the war, and I will get worked up no more about using money inefficiently to rent hearts and minds than I will about using too much ammunition to destroy a target. Spending money in a counter-insurgency should not be held to standards that we'd hold states to with federal block grants to improve infrastructure or provide social services.
I didn't get upset about stories like this about Iraq War spending during the Bush administration, and I won't get upset now in this administration.
