Yes, We Are That F*cking Stupid

You just can't make this up:

Since the inception of the war in Afghanistan, the United States has lost more than 1,500 lives and spent over $400 billion — much of which devoted to reconstruction, aid, and other forms of direct support.

So when the U.S. government announced last year that Afghanistan may have over $1 trillion in mineral wealth, one might have assumed that it would work with U.S. companies, and companies from other coalition countries, to help them participate in the development of these resources.

Not so. In the most recent installment of “we pay, China plays,” the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) will soon be awarded a 20-year lease on several oil fields in Northern Afghanistan. This follows the other major resource tender in Afghanistan, in 2007, in which the government of Afghanistan awarded a 30-year lease on the country’s largest copper mine to the China Metallurgical Group.

Amazingly, the process that will result in the award to CNPC has been designed and managed by a U.S. Defense Department task force, which is also footing the bill for the international lawyers and consultants who are advising the Afghan government on the tender. The task force set up the process to award the resource to the bidder offering the highest percentage of its revenues from operations to the Afghan government as a royalty — which skews the tender in favor of state-owned Chinese companies more concerned with capturing valuable resources than achieving an attractive return on their investment. The process failed to take into meaningful consideration the bidders’ respective track records on technology, the environment, and local employment, among others, all of which would have played to the strengths of Western companies.

So we spend American lives and treasure so others can profit from our sacrifice because to do otherwise wouldn't be 'fair.'

It makes you want to track down some of the moronic bureaucrats who devised this system and rip their lungs out with a rusty fork. Sigh.  Read the whole disgusting thing at the Corner on NRO.

Christ on a crutch.