Jesus H Fucking Christ

Wapo.com: Defense Spending Is Overstated, GAO Report Says:

The Pentagon has no accurate knowledge of the cost of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or the fight against terrorism, limiting Congress's ability to oversee spending, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report released yesterday.

The Defense Department has reported spending $191 billion to fight terrorism from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks through May 2005, with the annual sum ballooning from $11 billion in fiscal 2002 to a projected $71 billion in fiscal 2005. But the GAO investigation found many inaccuracies totaling billions of dollars.

"Neither DOD nor Congress can reliably know how much the war is costing and details of how appropriated funds are being spent," the report to Congress stated. The GAO said the problem is rooted in long-standing weaknesses in the Pentagon's outmoded financial management system, which is designed to handle small-scale contingencies.

Awesome.  Defense is plugging WAGs into reports for Congress because, uh, they don't know how much fucking money they are actually spending.  Material amounts, although not significant precentages of the total annual spending.  So I sit here bitching about how fucked up our national priorities are when we're spending $5 billion per month in Iraq, but in fact no one knows how much we're spending, which is such a lovely thing for democracy.

I wonder if we cut their fucking budget in half whether they'd get some good accounting procedures then.  You know how they say all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely?  An unlimited bank account does a pretty good job at corrupting, too.

Comments

[orangemagritte]

all things considered, i'd still like my very own unlimited bank account, please

[gouda]

Last week, Iraq's foreign minister stated that ALL of it's defense budget, $1.7 billion, was leaked, in effect stolen.

http://agedgouda.blogspot.com/2005/09/more-theft-on-grand-scale.html

Most of that money is from our taxes. And this is one reason why their security forces can't get on their feet. God, I'm so sick of all this corruption.