White House Rejects ‘Pessimistic’ Senate Report on Afghanistan

Report Detailing Lack of Success Runs Afoul of Claims of Massive Progress

White House spokesman Jay Carney today rejected the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s recent report on Afghanistan, saying that the report detailing the massive amount of money wasted on aid projects was “just simply wrong.”

The report concluded that the US had created a “culture of aid dependency” with massive aid projects and inflated salaries, and that the $320 million the US spends every month on aid projects has done nothing to improve stability in the war torn nation.

Which the White House rejects, primarily because it runs afoul of their repeated claims that the war is making massive progress recently. That “progress”  simply isn’t the kind which involves anything getting measurably better.

Carney also criticized the report for focusing on the $320 million in civilian aid, noting that it was only a small fraction of the huge overall cost of the war. While this seems to only make the case for the failing war even worse, Carney appeared to feel this was quite an important point.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.