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Comment by jakear | Hacker News Reader

> $30 billion on other reconstruction programs > Much of that money was lost to corruption and failed projects.

Back in HS we had a local veteran/father come in to our classroom to talk about things. What stuck with me the most was his experience with distributing aid funds to Afghan citizens. Apparently there was 0 accountability in this process: he would pick up a package of raw cash, take it to a school/hospital/whatever, hand it to some "in charge" person, and walk away. No contract, progress report requirement, or anything. Further, the recipient didn't even need to sign for the money, because of this he felt concerned that US Govt. might some day come after him on suspect of money mishandling, so he took pictures of him handing the money over to each person. He showed us the photos, but says the Govt. has never requested them, or any other confirmation that he didn't just pocket it all.

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I have a vivid memory of a BBC report where they reported on the scale of the operation for moving cash into Iraq: hundreds and hundreds of pallets of $100 bills - $12 billion in total.

Guardian link to the same story:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1

363 tons of $100 bills!

And $1.3b to Iran more recently:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sent-two-more-planeloads-of...

Money the old government payed us for airplane parts we didn't deliver to the new government, plus interest, divided by around 10 because we had leverage. Also, (2016).

In return, we got hostages on planes. Was it ransom disguised as a legally required transaction? Maybe. Was it effective? Iran did what we were asking in return, so...

OEF Veteran here.

I think this was highly dependent on a) where you were in-country and b) when you were there. There were some controls put in place, and a lot of it came from the State Department (?), by the time I left. Asking for “progress reports” would’ve been a completely futile endeavor though. It’s hard to describe ... they just don’t keep records, and the ones they kept were usually fake or highly “influenced”. I remember one “contract” we gave out to some locals for building culverts in roads with drainage problems (Afghanistan is pretty mountainous in places, so only dirt roads exist and the soil isn’t that great). They built a couple and then just disappeared. When we asked some folks about where they went we’d get blank stares, like they didn’t know who we were talking about.

Wild place.

The disparity between that and the government correcting me for being off on my tax by $500 is breathtaking.

Obvious question - cui bono?

Are you sure the government does that? Did you actually check?

I've never been questioned by the Feds on anything, but my state disallowed a deduction with value to my taxes of <$0.50.

My uncle was in a few cash-heavy businesses (laundromat + plumber) he was audited annually, especially on the laundromat side.

If the government is correcting an error for $500 on your taxes, its almost certainly doing that using an automated system with very little human-time-per-case for oversight. This is possible because of developed-world infrastructure -- all relevant numbers are digitized and entered into computers, all people are documented and contactable, etc. -- which is missing in Afghanistan, so it's not super surprising.

Edit: Woah, HN, you have truly gone crazy. My comment is an explanation for why accountability is so much harder in Afghanistan than the developed world. It is not a general defense all US tax-collection procedures, and it is especially not a place for you to vent frustration about how the lack of pre-filled-out returns in the US benefits tax software makers.

If they have the software why not just send me a rundown of how much I owe and I could just sign over to them how much they want.

Arghhh this frustrates me every tax season.

Intuit wouldn't like that at all. Corruption is rampant there too.

Because Intuit wouldn't make money if that happened.

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...

https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-t... (and lost)

They have the software, but they only have some of the numbers.

Your tax return includes all those that might not be reported.

For example of you are doing small non w2 jobs on the side that you haven't received a 1099 for, the IRS had no way of knowing about those without an audit.

The excellent film "Three Kings" dealt with a very similar topic, from back during the first Gulf War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kings_(1999_film)

Further, the recipient didn't even need to sign for the money

I'm guessing a bunch of that money never made it to the intended targets.

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