Is the United States really relying on drunk US military contractors to stop another terrorist attack? A new video surfaced this week showing a few contractors stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan who appear to be drunk or stoned.
According to Time Magazine , the video was released by two former employees of Jorge Scientific, a Virginia based defense company that received $47 million in government funding to run security in Afghanistan. The employees, John Melson and Kenny Smith, said that they were worried about the safety of the United states due to to the drunken behavior of the military contractors.
Melson said: “It was going against everything that we were trying to do over there.”
ABC reports that Jorge Scientific was tasked with training the Afghan National Police in counter-insurgency tactics. Melson and Smith are now suing the company saying that there was “widespread misconduct” at the company. Melson and Smith also accuse Jorge Scientific of fraud under the False Claims Act.
Jorge Scientific said that the incident in the video involved only a small number of contractors and that the behavior was not typical of its employees.
Jorge Scientific said:
“(We have taken) decisive action to correct the unacceptable behavior of a limited number of employees that occurred at an administrative living facility in Afghanistan.”
The US military is also launching its own investigation into the incident.
The military said in a statement:
“(The behavior) described by ABC news is not acceptable for U.S. personnel, but it is not indicative of the outstanding work that thousands of contractors and service members perform every day in Afghanistan.”
Melson and Smith described the base in Afghanistan as a frat house. The whistleblowers said that contractors frequently passed out and left firearms lying around. They also used narcotics and threw live ammunition into big fires.
Melson said:
“It was like a frat house for adults. Some of them to the point where they were passing out, there’s firearms laying around, some of them still carrying the firearms on them.”
Here’s the video of the drunk military contractors in Afghanistan.
Jorge Scientific said that the base has been put under new leadership and that a “no drugs and alcohol” policy has been put into effect.
