The United States spent US$43 million building a gas station in Afghanistan, according to a report by a government watchdog on reconstruction spending.
John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, "gratuitous and extreme" - and possibly criminal.
Sopko's team of investigators has uncovered all kinds of wasteful spending in Afghanistan through its work as a government watchdog.
In a scathing report, Sopko wrote that a similar compressed natural gas station in Pakistan cost US$500,000, or about US$306,000 at current exchange rates, meaning the Afghanistan station, which was designed to supply compressed natural gas, cost 140 times as much.
He wrote that the Pentagon's programme had "several troubling aspects", including US$30 million in overhead costs, and the lack of a feasibility study before the project began.