Your Tax Money at Work

[xoxoxoBruce]

The United States trumpets education as one of its shining successes of the war in Afghanistan. But a BuzzFeed News investigation reveals U.S. claims were often outright lies, as the government peddled numbers it knew to be false and touted schools that have never seen a single student.

Number one is the tragedy of the children. Secondly, the Billions pissed away. Lastly, who ended up with the money and what they did with it.

link

[Lamplighter]

Sounds a lot like the "Three Cups of Tea" fiasco...

From Wikipedia

Three Cups of Tea describes Mortenson's transition from a registered nurse and mountain-climber to a humanitarian committed to reducing poverty and elevating education for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Following the beginnings of his humanitarian efforts, Mortenson became co-founder of the Central Asia Institute (CAI), a non-profit group that, as of 2010, reports it has overseen the building of over 171 schools.[3] CAI reports that these schools provide education to over 64,000 children, including 54,000 girls,[4] where few education opportunities existed before in the remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.[5][6][7]
<snip>
In April 2011, critiques and challenges of the book and Mortenson were released. Author Jon Krakauer alleged that a number of Mortenson's claims in the book are fictitious and accused him of mismanaging CAI funds.[9][10][11][12]

Though Mortenson and Relin are given equal credit for authoring the Three Cups of Tea, it is written from Relin's perspective as a journalist interviewing and observing Mortenson. In the introduction, Relin admitted that his desire to see Mortenson's project succeed likely influenced his objectivity as a reporter.[18] Elizabeth Kaplan, the agent for the book, later acknowledged that the relationship between Mortenson and Relin was difficult.[19] Mortenson, who was often traveling, was hard to track down, and Relin spoke publicly about how Mortenson should not have been named a co-author.[19] As detailed in a New York Times article, Relin "suffered emotionally and financially as basic facts in the book were called into question" and later committed suicide on November 15, 2012.[19][20]

Our town library's "Lake Oswego Reads" program was one of the "fund-raising" sources that got scammed.