http://www.military.com/news/article...=1186032325324
The logic about how the war in Iraq would pay for itself from oil revenues never did pan out in spite of the fact that it’s an oil-rich country. How much worse is the situation in Afghanistan, then, where there is no oil industry and the very cost of getting fuel to U.S. forces – buying, shipping and hauling – has become embarrassingly high?
About $400 per gallon worse.
That’s the figure the Pentagon has come up with after crunching all the costs related to getting gasoline into the tanks, Humvees and helos operating in the Afghan theater, according to the Pentagon.
The number emerged after the Pentagon’s comptroller was directed to spell out why the Afghan war costs about $1 billion for every 1,000 Americans deployed there, according to a report in The Hill newspaper, which said the Obama administration uses that number in estimating costs of sending the up-to-40,000 new troops requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The reasons given for the overall high price for fuel – what the Pentagon calls the “fully burdened cost of fuel” – is the lack of infrastructure in Afghanistan and a geography that’s unforgiving of ground transport bound for remote bases in mountainous regions.
