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Afghanistan corrupt -- WHO KNEW?
From an AP article published today:
BERLIN – Afghanistan has slipped three places to become the world's second most-corrupt country despite billions in aid meant to bolster the government against a rising insurgency, according to an annual survey of perceived levels of corruption.
Since 2001, the U.S. Congress has appropriated more than $39 billion in humanitarian and reconstruction assistance for Afghanistan, according to a report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. European nations send about 1 billion euros ($1.49 billion) a year, a total of 9 billion euros since 2002.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091117/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_corruption_index
Now, let's compare an article in today's UK Times:
British forces should buy off potential Taleban recruits with “bags of gold”, according to a new army field manual published yesterday.
Major-General Paul Newton said: “The best weapons to counter insurgents don’t shoot. In other words, use bags of gold in the short term to change the security dynamics. But you don’t just chuck gold at them, this has to be done wisely.”
British commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq have complained that their access to money on the battlefield — cash rather than literal gold — compares poorly with their US counterparts.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6919516.ece
Un-frickin'-believable -- the occupiers bribe their vassals with 'bags of gold.' Then they are shocked -- shocked -- to learn that their flimsy puppet state has become corrupt. Oh my, who would have guessed that such a thing could happen?
Note that illiterate Pashtun tribesmen don't accept worthless greenback scrip. They want REAL money -- gold. Same as it ever was.
OMG, 'rich westerners' are such total retards. Reckon it was fluoride in the water supply that done this to us? Meanwhile, I could use some help tying me shoelaces ...
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Economy based on Opium.
It would be cheaper and less deadly to just buy the entire opium crop and dump it.
Dump it? 
You could back a currency with that stuff, man!
No food -- no problem. Just redeem a twenty at your friendly FRB branch, fire up the hookah, and take a trip to Xanadu ... 
If you haven’t read the article in today’s New York Times titled “High Costs Weigh on Troop Debate for Afghan War,” please do so. If all the other reasons for not dramatically expanding our military effort in that land of beaten down invaders has not yet convinced you that a major buildup there would be insane, this one should do the trick.
The article points out that even a modest buildup from present levels would wipe out savings from our Iraq withdrawal. A build up of 30,000 or 40,000 troops would cost between $30 billion and $54 billion a year more than our present expenditures there.
This article tells it better than I can here. It also doesn’t froth the way I do in the face of demands to fight another needless never ending war promoted by what Dwight Eisenhower first characterized in the 1950s as the military-industrial complex, and which today might better be labeled the military-industrial-contractor-talk radio-congressional complex.
High Costs Weigh on Troop Debate for Afghan War - NYTimes.com
US defense contractors pay insurgents millions
How the US Funds the Taliban
"A carnival of really strange characters getting rich off the [Afghanistan] war"
video with investigative jounalist Aram Roston:
http://i5.democracynow.org/2009/11/12/ta...
Humans... How brief their flames, yet how brightly they burn. When people run in circles, it's a very, very.. mad world..mad world -- Tears for Fears
We're going to be out of Afghanistan in the next couple years, if for nothing else that we run out of money. (Same as the Mujahadeen did to Moscow).
Un-frickin'-believable -- the occupiers bribe their vassals with 'bags of gold.'
Makes sense to me!
They got the gold; we got the shaft. 
They got the gold; we got the shaft.
They got the gold; we got the shaft.
Maybe the sacks are gold plated tungsten?
Another Afghanistan story in the news...Thousands of guns U.S. sent to Afghanistan are missing...
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- More than one-third of all weapons the United States has procured for Afghanistan's government are missing, according to a government report released Thursday.
The U.S. military failed to "maintain complete inventory records for an estimated 87,000 weapons -- or about 36 percent -- of the 242,000 weapons that the United States procured and shipped to Afghanistan from December 2004 through June 2008," a U.S. Government Accountability Office report states.
"Accountability lapses occurred throughout the supply chain," it says. The military also failed to properly account for an additional 135,000 weapons it obtained for the Afghan forces from 21 other countries.
"What if we had to tell families [of U.S. soldiers] not only why we are in Afghanistan but why their son or daughter died at the hands of an insurgent using a weapon purchased by the United States taxpayers? But that's what we risk if we were to have tens of thousands of weapons we provided washing around Afghanistan, off the books,"
I'm sure these guns will show up somewhere. They just need some time to find where they misplaced 87,000 weapons, probably behind something else.
END the FED before it ENDS US
Economy based on Opium.
It would be cheaper and less deadly to just buy the entire opium crop and dump it.