{"id":8321,"date":"2013-08-01T18:02:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-01T18:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=8321"},"modified":"2013-08-01T18:02:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-01T18:02:00","slug":"pentagon-awards-contracts-to-al-qaeda-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=8321","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon awards contracts to Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Operation<\/a>Supporters of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan have been getting U.S. military contracts, and American officials are citing \u201cdue process rights\u201d as a reason not to cancel the agreements, according to an independent agency monitoring spending.<\/p>\n

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The U.S. Army Suspension and Debarment Office has declined to act in 43 such cases, John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, said today in a letter accompanying a quarterly report to Congress.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI am deeply troubled that the U.S. military can pursue, attack, and even kill terrorists and their supporters, but that some in the U.S. government believe we cannot prevent these same people from receiving a government contract,\u201d Sopko said.<\/p>\n

The 236-page report and Sopko\u2019s summary provide one of the watchdog agency\u2019s most critical appraisals of U.S. performance in helping to build a stable Afghanistan as the Pentagon prepares to withdraw combat troops by the end of next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere appears to be a growing gap between the policy objectives of Washington and the reality of achieving them in Afghanistan, especially when the government must hire and oversee contractors to perform its mission,\u201d said Sopko, whose post was mandated by Congress.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon is scheduled to deliver its own Afghanistan status report to Congress today. Its appraisal, which is months late, will outline progress from October 2012 through March and concerns that deal with handing over security operations to the Afghan military.<\/p>\n

Sopko said the Army \u201cappears to believe that suspension or debarment of these individuals and companies would be a violation of their due-process rights if based on classified information\u201d or on Commerce Department reports.<\/p>\n

Regarding the 43 cases of contractors with militant connections, Sopko said the Army should \u201cenforce the rule of common sense\u201d in its suspension and debarment program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey may be enemies of the United States but that is not enough to keep them from getting government contracts,\u201d according to the agency\u2019s report. – Bloomberg<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supporters of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan have been getting U.S. military contracts, and American officials are citing \u201cdue process rights\u201d as a reason not to cancel the agreements, according to an independent agency monitoring spending. The U.S. Army Suspension and Debarment Office has declined to act in 43 such cases, John Sopko, the … Continue reading “Pentagon awards contracts to Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10,123],"tags":[2355,4223,1646,4625,1638,4624],"class_list":["post-8321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","category-world","tag-afghanistan","tag-congress","tag-pentagon","tag-special-inspector-general-for-afghanistan-reconstruction","tag-us","tag-war-on-terror"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/afghanistanwar.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8323,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8321\/revisions\/8323"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}