Roston

The journalist Aram Roston exposed in the magazine The Nation that the American forces are currently paying the Taliban and other insurgents hundreds of millions of dollars to let their supply trucks pass through key areas without being blown up.

Johann Hari: The Troops in Afghanistan Really Are Being Betrayed -- By the Politicians Who Keep Them There Johann Hari 2011

The journalist Aram Roston exposed in the magazine The Nation that the American forces are currently paying the Taliban and other insurgents hundreds of millions of dollars to let their supply trucks pass through key areas without being blown up.

Johann Hari: The Troops in Afghanistan Really Are Being Betrayed -- By the Politicians Who Keep Them There Johann Hari 2011

“Even if the Kyrgyz government wasn't getting paid much for the base, the Akayev family was reaping tens of millions,” Roston reports.

Ex-Army intelligence officer focus of Kyrgyz corruption probes 2010

“It may have just been business,” Roston writes, “but the way Kyrgyz investigators later saw it, Red Star, the prime contractor, was the cut out for funneling funds to the Akayev family.”

Ex-Army intelligence officer focus of Kyrgyz corruption probes 2010

"Full and open competition need not be provided for when the disclosure of the agency's needs would compromise the national security," according to the rule, which Roston dug up.

Ex-Army intelligence officer focus of Kyrgyz corruption probes 2010

Roston joins us now here in our firehouse studio, the author of the book The Man Who Pushed America to War:

OpEdNews - Diary: AMERICAN GOVERNMENTS���under BUSH and OBAMA���Continue to pay bribes to Taliban in Afghanistan in the millions each year 2009

Noting the speaker-fee flap, Roston calls Friedman's boast "one of the worst-timed statements in the history of public relations."

Yvette Kantrow: Friedman and Andrews Play the Clueless Defense 2009

As Roston drily puts it, "the suggestion went nowhere."

Bruce Wilson: Pentagon Funds Taliban Who Are Killing US Troops 2009

Roston traces how the Pentagon's civilian contractors in Afghanistan end up paying insurgent groups to protect American supply routes from attack.

OpEdNews - Diary: AMERICAN GOVERNMENTS���under BUSH and OBAMA���Continue to pay bribes to Taliban in Afghanistan in the millions each year 2009

US military officials in Kabul told Roston that a minimum of ten percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts consists of payments to the Taliban.

OpEdNews - Diary: AMERICAN GOVERNMENTS���under BUSH and OBAMA���Continue to pay bribes to Taliban in Afghanistan in the millions each year 2009