BACKGROUND: This report provides Department of Defense (DoD) contractor personnel numbers for 4th quarter Fiscal Year 2021 (FY21) and the current status of efforts underway to improve management of contractors accompanying the United States (U.S.) Forces. It includes data on DoD contractor personnel deployed in Afghanistan, Operation Freedom’s Sentinel (OFS); Iraq and Syria, Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR); and the U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) area of responsibility (AOR).
A hasty U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as the Taliban overpowered the government and took control of the capital left many wondering what happened to the trillions of dollars spent over the last two decades since 2001.
Around $300 million a day was spent according to a Brown University calculation – that was spent on private contractors to power the logistics. Private contractors served largely as hired guns, but also as cleaners, cooks, construction workers, technicians, and servers on sprawling U.S. bases.
On Tuesday General Mark Milley testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee along with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the head of U.S. Central Command General Kenneth McKenzie Jr. None of these generals will resign or would resign prior to the disastrous withdrawal although they knew it would end in disaster for Americans left behind.
General McKenzie took responsibility for droning an innocent family but won’t admit he used Taliban intelligence. He didn’t have any other intelligence. The droning was based on good intelligence according to General McKenzie.
General McKenzie testified that he advised Biden to not withdraw all the forces.
“I recommended we keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.” Also says he predicted withdrawing them would cause the Afghan army to collapse and the Taliban taking over. General Milley later said the same thing.
This crew didn’t have enough resources, didn’t have the proper staging, and yet they planned it by their own testimony! They also didn’t plan for the President’s option to flee.
General Milley, totally unprepared for the questioning, couldn’t answer questions about the Woodward book suggesting he’s a traitor. Milley said he didn’t read it. He didn’t want to check for accuracy? He has no sense of responsibility.
Basically, they want you to believe they planned for every contingency and no one could have done a better job.
Gen Mark Milley gave the stark assessment at an extraordinary hearing of the Senate armed services committee to examine the US departure, which also became a postmortem on the 20-year war that preceded it.
Milley appeared alongside the defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, and the head of US Central Command, Gen Kenneth ‘Frank’ McKenzie, in the most intense, heated cross-examination of the country’s military leadership in more than a decade.
At one point, Milley was obliged to defend his loyalty to his country, in the face of allegations of insubordination in last weeks of the Trump administration, and to explain why he had not resigned in the course of the chaotic Afghan pullout.
“It is obvious the war in Afghanistan did not end on the terms we wanted,” Milley said, noting “the Taliban is now in power in Kabul.”
