Back in 2007, I spent a half year deployed to Afghanistan doing anti-IED work. I was NOT alone.
However, this article focuses on one narrow and apparently misguided effort:
“The IG already found two Afghan contractors who billed the U.S. government $1 million for the installation of 250 such devices, but then never completed the work or did it haphazardly.
There are at least 2,500 places where the prevention devices were supposed to be installed...no one’s certain if they ever actually were.”
I knew that there were some functional programs. No details, no personal contact with anything associated. I do know people who were. Often you can sense by things not said what is actually going on, when you dare not ask a direct question.
Familiarity conveys some things without being said.
This is a sense that I developed from acquaintances and relatives. My father in law was in the weapons business 40 years. I was married to his daughter for 8 years before I had any idea what he did. That came from a newspaper article that floored me. He and I were very close, he did not talk shop, but much was conveyed by silence or general conversation. He made it clear to me back in the 1970’s that the FBI knew who I was and what I did for a living, etc. I had neighbors who told me that they were contacted about us. But I was always confident that prying in my life was to defend the nation. Now, it is being used to subject the citizens and target those who will oppose the destruction of the nation.
Protect & defend her I will.