Gold Star Families May Show "War is a Racket," Corporations Paying Enemy
In an landmark case for families of military veterans, a large group of plaintiffs , including families of fallen soldiers, have accused American corporations, including Louis Berger Group, of playing both sides in Afghanistan for profit, even funding the Taliban which uses the proceeds to kill American soldiers. The families say the corporations pay what amounts to protection money to the Taliban for allowing projects, many ultimately doomed, to continue.
The lawsuit comes on the heels of a damning Washington Post series The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War, which lambastes the US government for lying about progress in the war.
The UK Guardian reported on the Washington Post series:
"Hundreds of confidential interviews with key figures involved in prosecuting the 18-year US war in Afghanistan have revealed that the US public has been consistently misled about an unwinnable conflict."
Another major defendant in the lawsuit is Kansas City-based Black & Veatch.
In 2011 Massachusetts Congressman John Tierney, a Democrat, chaired an investigation into a system of the Pentagon paying "protection money" to the Taliban for the safe passage of NATO supply convoys through hostile territory in Afghanistan, which is most of the country. The report, produced by House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, was entitled Warlord Inc.
In that report, the "protection money" to insurgents was studied for one $2 billion contract to HNT, Host Nation Trucking. The report concluded definitively that up to 20 percent of funds for contracts to transport U.S. military supplies are knowingly and systematically paid to insurgents
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on December 3, 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted:
"You offload a ship in Karachi and by the time whatever it is – you know, muffins for our soldiers’ breakfasts or anti-IED equipment – gets to where we’re headed, it goes through a lot of hands. And one of the major sources of funding for the Taliban is the protection money."