From: ProPublica [mailto:donotreply@lists.propublica.net]
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2015 10:00 AM
Subject: How the U.S. Military Spent $2B in Afghanistan
Friday, May 15, 2015
Money as a Weapons System
by Megan McCloskey, Mike Tigas, Ryann Grochowski Jones, Sisi Wei, Jeff Larson, ProPublica, and Ingrid Burrington, Special to ProPublica
|How U.S. commanders spent $2 billion of petty cash in Afghanistan.
The military’s mantra for Afghanistan was “winning hearts and minds.” And a key part of that strategy was cold, hard cash.
During a decade of war, the Pentagon gave more than $2 billion to commanders to spend as they wished on a broadly defined grab bag of “urgent humanitarian” needs. The goal was to gain support from the locals for both the U.S. military and the nascent Afghan government. It was, the military said: “money as a weapons system.”
Troops spent their mad money in a myriad of ways. Nearly $5,000 went to a father whose daughter and son were caught in crossfire. Another $182,000 was doled out on sweaters. A motorcycle shop owner received a $903microgrant to replace equipment the Taliban stole. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on large projects, such as a hospital in a rural area that had no healthcare.
https://projects.propublica.org/cerp
vj
Comments