Friday, April 16, 2010
Fix It Again Tony
This was once the secret meaning of Fiat. According to McClatchy it is now what you say if you want your Afghan National Police to shoot straight after the US contractors have finished.
For several years, Afghan police recruits under the tutelage of private U.S. government contractors couldn't understand why their marksmanship never improved.Maybe the contractors figured that with half the trainees running off to join the Taliban, they didn't need to shoot straight. Anyway you look at it, it is another reason to just get out of the Kabul Quagmire.
The answer became clear earlier this year. Italian contractors also helping to train Afghan volunteers showed them that the sights on their AK-47s and M-16s had never been adjusted.
"We're paying somebody to teach these people to shoot these weapons, and nobody ever bothered to check their sights?" Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said, after relating that story at a hearing Thursday.
To McCaskill, who chaired the hearing of the Senate Contracting Oversight panel, it illustrated why the U.S. has spent more than $6 billion on private contractors, but the police-training program remains rife with problems.
"It is an unbelievable, incompetent story of contracts," she said. "For eight years we have been supposed training the police in Afghanistan. We've flushed $6 billion."
Subscribe to Comments [Atom]
Post a Comment