Congressman Seeking to Relaunch Afghan War Made Millions in Defense Contracting

[BeckyDem]

Florida Republican Michael Waltz made up to $25 million from the sale of Metis Solutions, a defense contractor with a spotty record training Afghan security forces.

Lee Fang


August 20 2021, 10:19 a.m.




Few lawmakers are as outspoken about the end of the war in Afghanistan as Michael Waltz, a Republican from Florida’s 6th Congressional District.

In recent weeks, Waltz has called on President Joe Biden to “reverse course,” relaunch military operations in the region, and “crush the Taliban offensive by committing American air power” supported by “special forces.” The Florida congressman has warned darkly of an “Al-Qaeda 3.0” and stated that no negotiations should take place with the Taliban “until the situation is stabilized militarily.”

Leading this push, in the pages of newspapers, over talk radio, and on cable television, Waltz couches his advocacy in his identity and experience. Not only is he a sitting memer of Congress, but he is a former Green Beret, a former aide to Dick Cheney, and “a father … sickened by what’s to come for the Afghan women and girls that are being mercilessly abused by the Taliban and sold into sex slavery,” as he wrote in opinion column published last week in Fox News.

There’s one crucial part of Waltz’s experience he tends to leave out: Before his successful run for Congress in 2018, he managed a lucrative defense contracting firm with offices in Afghanistan. The company was recently sold to Pacific Architects and Engineers, or PAE, one of the largest war contractors the U.S. has hired to train and mentor Afghan security forces. The deal personally enriched Waltz by up to $26 million, a figure made public by a filing disclosed this month.

https://theintercept.com/2021/08/20/mike-waltz-afghanistan/

[2naSalit]

1. K&R

[Walleye]

2. Looks like they did a crappy job of training security forces

[Prof. Toru Tanaka]

3. They don't care, as long as they are profiting.

[Walleye]

5. Correct! Those sweet taxpayer dollars

[mopinko]

4. is that grayson's old district?

hmmm.

[BeckyDem]

7. Good catch.

https://floridapolitics.com/archives/372872-alan-grayson-endorses-opponent-in-cd-6-race/

[tulipsandroses]

6. Instead of hair on fire reporting about the Taliban

I’d like to see in depth reporting about how the money was being spent. Who profited and what were WE getting out of this. What were the Afghans getting? Not just cities like Kabul. The majority of the population live in the rural countryside. Many still do not have running water and basic necessities. I don’t know what kind of nation building we were doing.
I watched a veteran say that when they were assigned to do training, it was never adequate. She mentioned that illiteracy was a huge barrier. She said they, the U S soldiers sometimes signed off that that Afghanistan soldiers knew how to do things they did not.

[wnylib]

9. Instead of trying to train them

on sophisticated equipment beyond their literacy level, would it be effective to train them on less sophisticated arms? Assuming that we really wanted to train them and get out.

Surely Biden knows that this was a money grabbibg scheme by contractors and that's why he wants us out.

Another problem occurs to me. Did any of the Afghanis working for the US know how much of a scam was going on in training? Should we be wary of letting them into the US? Is this why Biden said that Afghanis didn't want to fight for their country? I'm betting that the average Afghan soldier was sincere and didn't know what was going on. But higher ranking Afghanis, e.g. war lords, knew, as well as some people they sent to work in the US offices there.

What an effin' mess.

[Moebym]

8. The use of Afghan women and girls as props

As so many on their side (and even some on ours, though for different reasons) have done to attack Biden for his "failure" in Afghanistan is plainly disgusting, and this is a particularly egregious example.

[lees1975]

10. Did you catch "former aide to Dick Cheney" in the text?

Is there anyone in the United States who made more money off Afghanistan and Iraq than he did?

I once said that there was no one in all American history more corrupt than Cheney, but then there was Trump, who made it a close contest.