[T]o arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.
With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.
Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed. —NY Times
The whole story is a long one, but it’s a jaw-dropper. Right here in our own back yard, too….too bad we don’t have a local newspaper that might have discovered it first.
Obalesque 
So?
We agree with Dick Cheney.
So much corruption; so little time . . . Ugh!
PS The Hurled got around to reporting this in today’s paper. If all goes according to pattern, the Lauderdale Sun-Snotinel will simply reprint the original NY Times piece (abridged: S-S readers are understandably attention-challenged) in Sunday’s edition.
Two local bloggers (both on your Blogroll)
have picked up on the story as well:
South Florida Daily and Swampstyle.
Dick Cheney’s acerbic remark notwithstanding,
much could be made of this,
including exposure of the flag-waving button-wearing set
who deplore those who would “underfund the troops”
and slime their patriotism.