Though the Pentagon’s own report claimed the October 2012 goal of getting the Afghan military up to 352,000 members was met, a new report today from the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) confirms that they didn’t.
The new report says that not only did the Afghan military not reach its goal, but it is actually getting smaller, shrinking by 4,000 troops from March 2012 to February of this year.
SIGAR says that oversight is making it difficult to even tell how big the Afghan military is at any given time, but the high levels of attrition that have been a problem for years seem to be at the point now where troops are quitting faster than they can find new ones.
This may reflect the efforts to make the Afghan forces take more front-line responsibility in the ongoing war, with spiking casualty tolls perhaps scaring off the recruits that used to show up for a paycheck or two and then disappear before seeing any real combat.
Why is overseeing the Afghan military our concern? Our bloated military budget is the one that needs overseeing and audited. The last time the Pentagon and all military services were audited was in 2001. Rumsfeld, Gates, Panetta and Hagel have all failed to demand an audit.
I posted an important general comment link regarding antiwar, but it has been deleted – why not discussing this?
This: http://colorrevolutionsandgeopolitics.blogspot.de…
Afghan or American
Politicians, be they Afghan or American, surely they are nothing more then paid actors working for the rich ruling class, namely the warlords. So why get killed just to keep the rich in power, that be the way we laboring men figure it, be we Afghan or American.