US arms industry commits waste, fraud and abuse: Analyst

The US arms industry and defense contractors are guilty of war crimes and have inflicted a tremendous amount of waste and fraud on the people of the United States, a counterterrorism analyst says.

The American people are “waking up” to the “hypocrisy” of the military-industrial complex for its financing of terrorist operations against US troops, said Scott Bennett, a former US Army psychological warfare officer in San Francisco, California.

Some defense contractors and law firms in the US have formed partnerships and scam millions from American taxpayers and only increase terrorism around the world by fueling destruction and upheaval, Bennett told Press TV on Wednesday.

He said a new study about US military spending in Afghanistan “is just an indication of the waste, fraud and abuse which is being inflicted upon the American people by the military-industrial complex.”

A new study by the National Priorities Project (NPP) has revealed that the US-led war in Afghanistan is costing American taxpayers $4 million per hour despite the withdrawal of most American troops from the country at the end of last year.

Nearly $715 billion has been spent on the US invasion of Afghanistan since 2001, including $35 billion in fiscal year 2015, according to figures from the NPP, a non-governmental organization that does research on the federal budget and US military spending.

According to the NPP, however, the $715 billion cost for the Afghan war is deceiving because it does not include a full estimate of all the costs of the war, including future spending on medical care for wounded soldiers and veterans.