US politicians keen to shear costs from expensive reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan are locking horns with the Pentagon over a failed multi-million-dollar project to mate cashmere goats in the war-torn country.

A panel of politicians was aghast on Friday as John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan Reconstruction, described a defence department initiative to import Italian and Tajik goats that were supposed to mate on a remote farm and increase Afghanistan's output of blond and white cashmere wool.