Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
[ColonelCassad] Senator Rand Paul's blocking of $40 billion in military aid to Ukraine is, of course, a temporary phenomenon, but at the same time it is remarkable. In the motivational part, Senator Paul pointed out in plain text that the huge money allocated to Ukraine could simply be stolen, and demanded at least minimal control over their spending. Which is what caused the delay.
Naturally, the question arises - why does Senator Paul say that money can be stolen in the "democratic" USA or in the "democratic" Ukraine? Senator Paul answers it himself, pointing to the experience of Afghanistan, where the United States, according to Brown University estimates, pumped $2.31 trillion over 20 years (from the fall of 2001 to the summer of 2021). The result of the war is known - the Taliban (banned in the Russian Federation) won, and after 20 years they again control the whole of Afghanistan.
At the same time, even before the US fled from Kabul, even the American media openly wrote that a significant part of American aid to the Ghani government was dissolved in an unknown place, mostly nodding that it was plundered by the functionaries of the Afghan puppet regime and local warlords. However, there were also questions about the American public and private defense contractors who actively mastered this money.
But this story was far from unique. The United States has spent, according to various estimates, tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars trying to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Here, too, as you know, they failed (Russia and Iran tried). Already during the war, in the American media, the unflattering facts of embezzlement of American funds allocated for the “Syrian democratic revolution” began to surface. In particular, it was revealed that no one knows where the more than $350 million allocated by the CIA for the training of Syrian Free Army militants in training camps in Turkey has gone.
In fact, the money was spent, and the militants were not actually trained.
| Something to be grateful for. However expensive the non-performance, surely succeeding in that effort would have been more so... |
In addition, one can also recall the accusations of the occupation administration of Paul Bremer, which oversaw the "reconstruction of Iraq" and received tons of cash from the United States, some of which disappeared in an unknown direction. According to an investigation by the US Congressional Commission, of the $60 billion in cash delivered to Iraq, $12 billion completely disappeared without any documents. Most of the remaining money was spent on ordinary handwritten receipts that left serious doubts about their authenticity and did not give any understanding at all whether imported cash was spent. Similarly, the British Parliament eventually found out that of the £16bn allocated to Iraq by Britain, £8bn was missing.
In general, for those who tend to remember previous US wars, it is quite obvious that the probability that a significant part of the allocated funds will again be dissolved in an unknown direction is close to 100%. Senator Rand Paul is clearly of the same opinion, which is why he demands increased oversight of spending, but it seems that under the conditions of Ukraine this oversight will not help anyway.