New poster child for government waste

There is a new poster child for government waste. This one makes those $900 hammers look like a bargain. The Pentagon spent $43 million on a compressed natural gas station in Afghanistan. It is a project that was doomed from the start. But the worst part is that no one can account for who made the decisions behind the waste. That is the finding of an Inspector General’s report that was released this week. The Department of Defense says because it has shut down the Afghanistan business task force that built the pricey project, it is no longer answering questions about the decisions it made. The goal of the project was to try to prove to Afghanistan the feasibility of using compressed natural gas, rather than relying on imported fuel. But according to the Inspector General’s report, the Pentagon didn’t bother to conduct feasibility projects for its projects. As a result, they never realized that Afghanistan doesn’t have the infrastructure to distribute natural gas. And Afghans couldn’t afford the conversion necessary to make their cars capable of running on natural gas. This project was clearly a waste from the very beginning. But the Pentagon still spent $43 million of our money to complete the project, even though a similar project in Pakistan cost only $300,000. So far, the Defense Department hasn’t been able to say why this project cost so much. Congress should drag those in charge to Capitol Hill to explain this. Maybe we can sell them a $900 hammer when they arrive.