Richard Holbrooke: "We were recruiting Taliban with our tax dollars."

[sabra]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/18/AR2009061804135_2.html?sid=ST2009061804190

<snip>

But Richard C. Holbrooke, Obama's point man for Afghanistan policy, has a less sanguine view. The new administration, he said, needs "to fix what we have inherited."

Holbrooke intends to revamp the entire U.S. reconstruction effort, starting with agriculture aid and counternarcotics. He has decided to curtail campaigns to eradicate poppy crops -- which he believes have driven poor farmers to support the Taliban -- and restructure USAID's alternative employment programs, which together have cost the U.S. government almost $3 billion since 2004.

"In my experience of 40-plus years -- I started out working for AID in Vietnam -- this was the single most wasteful, most ineffective program that I had ever seen," he said in a recent interview. "It wasn't just a waste of money. . . . This was actually a benefit to the enemy. We were recruiting Taliban with our tax dollars."

[underpants]

1. Without an enemy what are all the contractors going to bill for?

:shrug:

What a scam they perpetrated on the American public and the world

[shadowknows69]

2. Slam slam slam!

:banghead: Just get the Hell out!!!