Afghanistan War

The Sept/Oct issue of The Defense Monitor, newsletter of the Center for Defense Information (CDI), focuses on the Afghanistan War. It has several articles on the war, including "The Afghan War: Which Side is DOD [Dept. of Defense] On?" by Winslow Wheeler, which points out the imprecise and deceptive nature of DOD reporting on the costs of the war:

DOD has combined whatever records it retains for money spent in Afghanistan with the money spent for all other DOD purposes. As such, the money actually spent for Afghanistan – and Iraq – cannot be separated and identified; it is unknown today, and thanks to DOD’s record keeping it is unknowable for the ages.

Surveying this fiscal junkyard in its May 18 report to Congress, "Global War on Terror: Reported Obligations for the Department of Defense," the Government Accountability Office (GAO) termed DOD’s spending data on the wars "to be of questionable reliability” and “should be considered approximations." The auditors at GAO are well practiced at understatement on such subjects.

"Divided We Stand: Divergent Strategic Visions in Afghanistan" by Monica Czwarno focuses on contrast between the "development" and "defense" strategies of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, which she reports that different countries in the NATO force are pursuing without a unified strategy.

Tags: afghanistan war, center for defense information, monica czwarno, winslow wheeler