In the wake of the report from a congressional subcommittee which confirms that massive amounts of Pentagon money (perhaps equaling or exceeding the Taliban's opium profits) finance the Taliban insurgency through a "protection racket" for truck convoys, media reports have been careful to hedge descriptions of the funding as "unintentional." This CBS news report mirrors the AP write-up, which states:

Criminal investigators are examining allegations that Afghan security firms have been extorting as much as $4 million a week from contractors paid with U.S. tax dollars and then funneling the spoils to warlords and the Taliban. If the allegations are true, the U.S. would be unintentionally financing the enemy and undermining international efforts to stabilize the country.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is simply not correct. The truth is much worse.

The report is "Warlord Inc," summary here.

Although it may be understandable if the Pentagon insists on the use of this word "unintentional," which lessens the impact, especially among military families, of finding out that many of the weapons and explosives used against their loved ones were paid for by funds from the U.S. Treasury, the Pentagon has known for years that this has been going on. It may be "reluctantly," but it is not "unintentionally." Unintentional implies a lack of deliberation and knowledge of consequences. The Tierney subcommittee report at many points includes statements such as:

[quote]"When HNT contractors self-reported to the military that they were being extorted by warlords for protection payments for safe passage and that these payments were “funding the insurgency,â€