A whopping $43 million later, and all the Pentagon has to show for it is one gas station in Afghanistan that "may or may not be functional," The Daily Intelligencer reports. A report released Monday by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found that the multi-million dollar project really should have cost less than $500,000 — 140 times less than the sum that the Pentagon spent.
"Even considering security costs associated with construction and operation in Afghanistan, this level of expenditure appears gratuitous and extreme," SIGAR said in the report.
It gets worse: The report suggests that there is "no indication" that the Task Force looked into the project's viability beforehand. If that feasibility study had been conducted, NBC News reports that SIGAR said the team "'might have noted' that Afghanistan lacks the infrastructure to make such a market viable — and that converting cars from gasoline to CNG would be cost-prohibitive for most Afghans."
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The department that was in charge of this particular project has since closed, leaving no answers to the question of where exactly this money went — or why. "It's an outrageous waste of money that raises suspicions that there is something more than just stupidity," John Sopko, the special inspector general, told NBC News, noting that the lack of answers was "one of the most troubling aspects of this project."
"There may be fraud. There may be corruption. But I cannot currently find out more about this because of the lack of cooperation," Sopko said.
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