Imperial profits/imperial losses

Keep this story (from McClatchy referred by Juan Cole) in mind when you are thinking about the dynamics of imperialism. It means different things to different people:

For several years, Afghan police recruits under the tutelage of private U.S. government contractors couldn't understand why their marksmanship never improved.

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."

Later in the same story:

"Just about everything that could go wrong here has gone wrong," Defense Department Inspector General Gordon Heddell told the subcommittee.

Moreover, the job of an Afghan police officer is exceedingly dangerous. The death rate has risen from about two dozen per month in recent years to about 125 each month, Heddell said.

So what do you think is going to happen?

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