{"id":205700,"date":"2015-12-03T16:40:47","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T16:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=205700"},"modified":"2015-12-03T16:40:47","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T16:40:47","slug":"pentagon-spent-150-million-afghanistan-villas-security-lavish-compounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/pentagon-spent-150-million-afghanistan-villas-security-lavish-compounds\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon Spent $150 Million on Afghanistan &quot;Villas,&quot; Security for Lavish Compounds"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The Pentagon spent $150 million in Afghanistan renting &#8220;villas&#8221; and private security contractors for Department of Defense employees there &#8211; officials from a now-defunct economic development arm called the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO).<\/p>\n<p>The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said &#8220;it is unclear what benefit the US received&#8221; from the outlays, and that the expenditures appear to have been made without a prior cost-benefit analysis.<\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"http:\/\/truthoutdocs.cloudaccess.net\/documents\/EMBARGOESIGAR1605SP.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Read the letter from SIGAR to the secretary of defense<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>SIGAR John Sopko said that TFBSO could have saved taxpayers &#8220;tens of millions of dollars&#8221; if it had chosen to house personnel &#8220;at DOD facilities in Afghanistan.&#8221; He made the statements in a Nov. 25 letter to Defense Secretary Ash Carter. The correspondence was published this week by SIGAR.<\/p>\n<p>Included among the lavish services Sopko inquired about were luxury commodities provided by private military contractors.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Triple Canopy provided TFBSO personnel with queen size beds in certain rooms, a flat screen TV in each room that was 27 inches or larger, a DVD player in each room, a mini refrigerator in each room, and an &#8216;investor villa&#8217; that had &#8216;upgraded furniture&#8217; and &#8216;western-style hotel accommodations,'&#8221; the comptroller noted.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/news\/item\/33887-pentagon-spent-150-million-on-afghanistan-villas-security-for-lavish-compounds\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Pentagon spent $150 million in Afghanistan renting &#8220;villas&#8221; and private security contractors for Department of Defense employees there &#8211; officials from a now-defunct economic development arm called the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO). The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said &#8220;it is unclear what benefit the US received&#8221; from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":205598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-205700","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}