Whack-a-mole War on Drugs: U.S. can't justify its drug war spending, reports say - latimes.com

The government knows where the drug war money goes - to the military-industrial complex - but it has no idea whether it is getting real results. The full report is available at Sen. McCaskill's Senate website.

War on drugs: U.S. can't justify its drug war spending, reports say - latimes.com: "Government reports say the Obama administration is unable to show that billions of dollars spent in the anti-drug efforts in Latin America have made a significant difference.

As drug cartels wreak murderous havoc fromMexico to Panama, the Obamaadministration is unable to show that the billions of dollars spent in the war on drugs have significantly stemmed the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States, according to two government reports and outside experts.

The reports specifically criticize the government's growing use of U.S. contractors, which were paid more than $3 billion to train local prosecutors and police, help eradicate fields of coca, operate surveillance equipment and otherwise battle the widening drug trade in Latin America over the last five years. ...

The reports specifically criticize the government's growing use of U.S. contractors, which were paid more than $3 billion to train local prosecutors and police, help eradicate fields of coca, operate surveillance equipment and otherwise battle the widening drug trade in Latin America over the last five years.

"We are wasting tax dollars and throwing money at a problem without even knowing what we are getting in return," said Sen.Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who chairs the Senate subcommittee that wrote one of the reports, which was released Wednesday.

The majority of U.S. counter-narcotics contracts are awarded to five companies: DynCorp, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, ITT and ARINC, according to the report for the contracting oversight subcommittee, part of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "