Fuel and water are currently transported on a dangerous route, requiring that US troops and local troops provide protection. A high number of US casualties in Afghanistan result from efforts to protect these convoys. The Army calculated in a 2009 study that 1 troop fatality occurs for every 24 fuel resupply convoys. In FY 2007, the military required 897 fuel convoys (with an average of 16 supply trucks) to deliver 2.1 million barrels of fuel. (In Iraq, during 2007, the US required 5133 fuel convoys to deliver about 12 million barrels). In the current year, the number and expense of convoys in Afghanistan has risen.

The cash—packed into suitcases, piled onto pallets and loaded into airplanes—is declared and legal to move. But U.S. and Afghan officials say they are targeting the flows in major anticorruption and drug trafficking investigations because of their size relative to Afghanistan’s small economy and the murkiness of their origins.

Officials believe some of the cash, if not most, is siphoned from Western aid projects and U.S., European and NATO contracts to provide security, supplies and reconstruction work for coalition forces in Afghanistan. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization spent about $14 billion here last year alone. Profits reaped from the opium trade are also a part of the money flow, as is cash earned by the Taliban from drugs and extortion, officials say.

Read full article here.

The Pentagon spent $500 million on site improvements, including volleyball courts, playgrounds, and go-karts.  We have spent $683,000 to renovate a cafe that sells ice cream and Starbucks coffee, and $773,000 to remodel a cinder-block building to house a KFC/Taco Bell restaurant.  Read the full article.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/afghanistan/2010-05-12-afghan_N.htm?csp=34

TRICARE is the military health care program serving active duty service members, National Guard and Reserve members, retirees, their families, and survivors worldwide.  We predicted that the Pentagon spending on health care would double from $19 billion in 2001 to about $40 billion in 2010.

BUT it is rising even faster than we projected.  The Pentagon now projects that TriCare will cost more than $50 billion in 2011, a 167% increase.  As a share of overall defense spending, health care costs have risen from 6% to 9% and will keep growing, according to Navy Lt. Cmdr. Kathleen Kesler, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Key factors driving up military health care costs include:

Multiple combat tours have created more strains on joints, backs and legs, Pentagon statistics show. Medical visits for such problems rose from 2.8 million in 2005 to 3.7 million in 2009.

Mental health issues:  Behavioral-health counseling sessions for troops and family members rose 65% since 2004. The Pentagon paid for 7.3 million visits last year — treatment of 140,000 patients each week.

• Many new patients are children suffering anxiety or depression because of a parent away at war. Children had 42% more counseling sessions last year than in 2005, TRICARE numbers show.

• The number of TRICARE beneficiaries has grown by 370,000 in the past two years to 9.6 million troops, family members and military retirees.

READ FULL ARTICLE:

www.usatoday.com/news/military/2010-04-22-vet_N.ht

Today, the US still has 96,000 troops stationed in Iraq — about the number as in March 2003. (In the interim, more than 2 million American troops have served in Iraq and Afghanistan).

It is still costing the US taxpayer around $7 billion per month for us to be in Iraq.  To date, we have spent close to $1 trillion in upfront out-of-pocket costs — but the war will cost at least $2 trillion more, when we include the cost of  paying for veterans disability compensation, veterans health care, replacement of armaments, and damage to the US economy.  Oil prices were $23 barrel when we invaded Iraq — they are now close to $80 barrel,  and have reached $130 barrel at their peak.

Since 2003, more than 4385 US troops have died, 315 coalition troops, and 100,000 or more Iraqis, depending on how you count.   More than 80,000 Americans have been wounded, injured or contracted a disease that required them to be evacuated from the war zone.

Of the 1 million Americans who have served and returned home as veterans, more than 40% have applied for disability compensation and been treated at VA medical facilities.  Numerous peer-reviewed medical studies have reported that there is an  “epidemic” of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and also an epidemic  of mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) among troops returning from combat.

The situation in Iraq remains unstable.  Of the more than 2 million Iraqis who fled the country during the civil war,  fewer than 15% have returned.  Tension remains high among the Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish populations, and the country still suffers from frequent suicide bombings, kidnappings and other violent crimes.

The US media has been largely focused on the health care vote and has given little coverage to the situation in Iraq as the US passes into the 8th year of military engagement.

It is a sign of just how bad things are that the GAO today blocked  the Army’s plans to award a $1 billion training program for Afghan police officers to Blackwater/Xe,  — upholding complaints from Dyncorp and other companies who said they were unfairly excluded from bidding on the job. This unprecedented moves follows protests by Senator Carl Levin, who pointed out the numerous abuses in which Blackwater/Xe has been implicated.

The decision will still make it possible for Blackwater to win a portion of the contract for overseeing training for the Afghan National Police when it is re-bid — but probably it will have a smaller role. The ruling makes it  unclear who will oversee training of the Afghan  Police, a poorly equipped, 90,000-strong paramilitary force that will inherit the task of preserving order in the country after NATO troops depart. Read article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/15/AR2010031503289.html

Since August, a series of large-scale bombings aimed at government buildings have killed several hundred people and shaken confidence in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s security services, following the withdrawal of most U.S. combat forces from major Iraqi cities last summer.

The number of Iraqis killed in February was twice as high as in January and 40% higher than a year earlier. The ongoing violence deters many of the 2 million Iraqi refugees — many of them middle class professionals now living in Syria — from returning to Iraq.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/03/03/iraq.violence/index.html

This does not bode well for costs either. The US has pledged to train and pay another 100,000 Afghan police as well as 100,000 Afghan troops, and this is likely to cost another $15 billion per year.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-18/keeping-the-taliban-down/p/

• Funding for veterans medical care, veterans disability compensation, and job training, housing and reintegration programs for veterans
• Other costs buried  in the defense budget, such as medical costs of military hospitals, senior Pentagon management time and attention, concurrent receipt of benefits, base salaries and equipment depreciation
• Interest on the debt used to finance the war
• Economic costs, such as loss of life, quality of life impairment, impact on family members, dislocation and long-term mental health disabilities