Private Contractors Pay the Taliban
Bradley Manning's exposure of private contractors paying the Taliban was one of Wikileaks' most important revelations. It's still happening.
This article shows Gold Star Families suing those private contractors for the deaths and injuries of American troops.
If we leave these private contractors in Afghanistan, the Taliban will continue to thrive.
https://www.legalreader.com/lawsuit-says-us-companies-paid-off-taliban-c...
Updated Lawsuit Says U.S. Companies Paid Off Taliban to Keep Contracts Active
RYAN J. FARRICK — June 10, 2020The families of Gold Star soldiers killed in Afghanistan have expanded a lawsuit which accuses U.S. military contractors of paying protection money to the Taliban.
The Wall Street Journal reports that two companies have been identified in an amended complaint. Together, the businesses received at least $1.7 billion to implement aid projects in Afghanistan. Their work lasted for the better part of a decade, ending only in 2015.
The amended lawsuit adds about 100 families to the existing complaint, nearly doubling the total number of plaintiffs—there are now, in total, 239 families represented. Altogether, they allege that a number of government- and military-sponsored contractors funneled finances to America’s wartime enemies to ensure the longevity of their contracts.
“Defendants supported the Taliban for a simple reason: Defendants were all large Western companies with lucrative businesses in post-9/11 Afghanistan, and they all paid the Taliban to refrain from attacking their business interests,” the original lawsuit says. “These protection payments aided and abetted terrorism by directly funding al-Qaeda-backed Taliban insurgency that killed and injured thousands of Americans.”
As LegalReader reported late last year, the federal Anti-Terrorism Act makes it illegal for any individual or entity to provide material support to the Taliban...
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Recent coverage
of the ongoing problem, racket, treason, whatever it should be called:
Giving material aid and comfort to the enemy
Although (R)'s talk about statements as "aid and comfort". The Constitution, according to what I have read, refers to material aid and "comfort" as things like housing troops.
These bribes are material aid to the Taliban that the USA is officially fighting (what is 'war' these days? is an AUMF a declaration of war?)
It would seem that these companies and individuals should be formally charged with treason.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
I completely agree with you.
It is treason, and so is our arming Al Qaeda in Syria.
Yes!
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Just throwing this in for a chuckle.
It's fun
to laugh.
Empires Cost Money Rather Than Make It
For about the last century, the traditional human ambition to dominate other nations has become an economic loser as first the British and then the Soviets learned the hard way. The cost of dominating a hostile populace far outweighs any amount of profit that can be squeezed out of a society, particularly one so desolate and so historically cantankerous as Afghanistan.
As we approach Decade Three of The War On Terror (remember that old brand name?), and "our" troops are still occupying multiple countries, we should all understand this reality -- war is a racket as General Smedley Butler revealed.
I think it is a mistake to attribute the Forever War to "resources" and "pipelines" and "sea lanes" and such. Those archaic concepts provide the vocabulary for rationalizing the racket. But the racket now is to use Uncle Sam's credit card to provide hundreds of billions of after tax profit to the grafters who own our uni-party government.
The "intellectuals" in the National Security State are in charge of manufacturing the excuses for military action all around the globe. This effort is driven by the relentless creation of political lies -- from Remember the Maine to the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and on to Infants On the Hospital Floor and Weapons of Mass Destruction, and, most recently, Killer Putin and Bounty on GIs.
These lies are always convoluted and illogical, which makes them very difficult to rebut in a sound bite culture.
The traditional "resources stealing" analysis of all of the above suffers from a huge logical flaw that is no accident, either: The War Forever Costs Money Rather than Makes It.
Round and round we go, propaganda and intellectual rigidity dancing our society away . . . .
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.