According to CNN, the Pentagon comptroller said during a congressional budgetmeeting that it cost "about $850,000 per soldier" per year in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments reached a more expensive conclusion: $1.2 million per soldier per year. The estimate is supposed to increase for 2012.
The Pentagon comptroller, Department of Defense undersecretary Robert Hale, said higher weapons operating costs were "a good part that's probably 50 percent of the budget" when explaining the $850,000 per-soldier statistic.
Something is wrong when the U.S. is spending around $1 million per soldier per year to fight in Afghanistan. It's more wrong when we're getting "probably" and "a good part" and other ambiguous terminology. While I'm struggling to pay my rent on a public school teacher's salary, I want to know why the Department of Defense lacks hard-and-fast figures on its overseas spending.
It's time to look into the government contracts with suppliers of gear and weapons. The soldier sees and uses nowhere near such an amount. Maybe they are figuring in the big brass salaries running the show in the Pentagon and DoD.
ReplyDeleteIt would be safer and cheaper to build 500 drones and let them do the work
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