Lawmakers themselves couldn’t seem to believe that Friday’s House Armed Services hearing on waste in Afghanistan involved discussing a herd of Italian goats.
“This is the kind of stuff that belongs on ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,’ not as a subject of a congressional hearing,” said Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., and ranking member of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing, referencing a satirical news show on HBO.
The Pentagon spent $6.1 million shipping Italian male goats to Afghanistan to mate with female Afghan goats to make cashmere as one of several initiatives to boost the Afghan economy after the war.
But many of the female goats were infected with a disease that could have wiped out the whole herd, Speier said. As a result, only two of “those fancy Italian goats” are still usable, she said.
“I think we can safely that say manufacturing warm fluffy sweaters is not the key to economic recovery in Afghanistan, nor is it in DoD’s expertise,” Speier said.
Lawmakers at the hearing hammered the Pentagon for wasting taxpayer dollars rebuilding Afghan economy and infrastructure. Speier said that in addition to the defunct cashmere goat farm, the $1 billion spent by the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations paid for employees to stay in private luxury villas and a $43 million gas station.
John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said the project included nine Italian goats and 10 from Tajikistan. Task Force for Business and Stability Operations personnel who worked on the project, which he deemed a “failure,” had “no idea what they were doing,” according to Sopko’s written testimony.
