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Date Posted: 16:52:57 03/12/09 Thu
Author: Bob
Subject: forum

The March edition of National Defense in its WASHINGTONPULSE section has this lead article: "U.S. commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly have asked for non-military help, such as engineers, agronomists and reconstruction experts. Such assistance would typically come from the U.S. Agency for International Development. But USAID is a shadow of its former self and mostly hires contractors to do the work. The military is overstretched, and would welcome an expansion of USAID, says Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli. But he does not expect things to change in the near future. "I'm not seeing a heck of a lot of movement to provide that capability yet,' he says."

"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged the problem in a recent speech to USAID employees. 'We have to regain our credibility in order to regain the authorities and the resources that have drifted elsewhere,' she says. Unless USAID can prove it can do the job,* the responsibilities---and the big money---will continue to reside at the Pentagon,** she adds."

* How can USAID prove it can do the job if it's underfunded and as a result, contractors have been hired to do what were previously government functions?

** She neglected to note that Rumsfeld was an adept empire builder and that the Pentagon is not noted for having agonomists in its table of organization.

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