I know I am one of the biggest critics of the War Department but I do have my reasons for my dislike of the organization.
The latest audit of the Pentagon shows that they piss money away and are not held accountable for their carelessness.
The Pentagon announced late last week that it failed its seventh consecutive audit as the sprawling, profiteering-ridden department wasn’t able to fully account for its trillions of dollars in assets.
As with its past failures to achieve a clean audit, the U.S. Defense Department attempted to cast the 2024 results in a positive light, with the Pentagon’s chief financial officer declaring in a statement that “momentum is on our side.”
The Pentagon is the largest U.S. federal agency and is responsible for roughly half of the government’s annual discretionary spending, with its yearly budget approaching $1 trillion despite long-standing concerns about the department’s inability to account for vast sums of money approved by lawmakers and presidents from both major parties.
The latest financial assessment published Friday by the Defense Department’s inspector general office estimates that the Pentagon has $4.1 trillion in assets. It is the only major federal agency that has never passed a clean audit, as required by law.
“Of the 28 reporting entities undergoing stand-alone financial statement audits, nine received an unmodified audit opinion, one received a qualified opinion, 15 received disclaimers, and three opinions remain pending,” the Pentagon said Friday.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/pentagon-seventh-audit
Let me ask you….what if this was a corporation that consistently failed its audit what would happen?
I will tell you….the leadership would be held accountable and it would be fired and cuts made to bring it back into line….but not the War Department…..it is our cash they cannot held so why do they stay in control and continuously lose and mismanage our money?
Apparently no one gives a shit about their waste because we go through life thinking we are all that and that we have an efficient defense mechanism….we do not!
And Biden as a parting gift to Ukraine wants to send them more cash….
The Biden administration has asked Congress to approve $24 billion in additional spending on Ukraine as it’s working to ramp up the proxy war as much as possible during President Biden’s final weeks in office.
POLITICO Pro obtained a request from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget that asked Congress to include additional Ukraine spending in a continuing resolution that’s expected to be voted on next month. Two congressional aides said Congress received the proposal on Monday.
The request asks for $8 billion for the Ukraine Security Assistance initiative, a form of military aid that allows the US to purchase weapons for Ukraine, and $16 billion to replace US military equipment that’s been sent to Ukraine.
(antiwar.com)
I am sick and tired of watching Ukraine get attention and the nation is secondary…..such bullshit…but it appears that I am not aslone in my disgust…
CBS News/YouGov poll has revealed that most Americans support ending U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
The poll, which was conducted November 19–22, found that 51 percent of Americans believe that the United States should not send further weapons or military aid to Ukraine. At the same time, 49 percent of Americans back further military aid to Ukraine. The finding comes at a time that the Biden administration has rapidly escalated the conflict
This nation’s people should be priority one but that has not been the case in about 40 years….these days it is about who can throw the most money at politicians and the peasants like you and me settle for scraps.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
Funds unaccounted for may be clandestinely transferred to CIA. Please comment if you know more about such a possibiity.
CIA’s ‘black budget’ is accounted for even the funding is approved by Congress…this is mostly from mismanagement….chuq
The Pentagon has always been notorious for wasting money, alas. It runs through the whole organization and also runs up into Congress as well, with Congressmen sending all that yummy pork barrel spending back to their home states by forcing the military to adopt weapons systems it doesn’t want and can’t use. It starts with the navy’s littoral ship fiasco, the F-35 fighter, most of the insanely expensive strategic bombers, and all the way down through the whole supply chain.
As for Ukraine, I am going to look like an isolationist, perhaps, and perhaps this will sound cruel, but we had no business getting involved with the Ukraine situation at all. The only reason we’re involved in Ukraine at all is a left over from the cold war days when we were engaging in “soft wars” or whatever you want to call it with the Soviet Union, waging war through proxies, more or less. That kind of thing is still so engrained in the US military policy that it’s almost a knee jerk reaction. Ukraine is, to be blunt, a purely local problem that should have been dealt with locally by the other countries of Europe, not us. Germany, France, Poland, the UK, the Scandinavian countries, etc. are not exactly poor. Ukraine is their neighbor, not ours.
We very badly need to get rid of this notion that the US is somehow a kind of police force for the entire world. Our interference in local conflicts taking place outside of our borders has almost never gone well and in the long term our interference has almost always caused more problems than it has fixed.
I remember the “Golden Fleece” award….yes it has been wasteful and slack…but it does have to be.
I agree with the Ukraine thing….all we are doing is making obscene profits for the arms industry it is not settling anything.
I agree and I have been saying the same thing for decades….invest money where it will do the most good and war is not it. chuq
I am thinking that after January 20, 2024 we will no longer have to worry about being the policeman for the rest of the world…we will just have to find a way to keep some of the world’s other dictators from moving on their neighbors….and I am certain that diplomacy will save the day just the same as it always has…LOL..
dictators will be dictators whether we spend a billion or not….moving on their neighbors is not likely as long as we keep funding the apparatus. chuq
It never ends, and I doubt it ever will.
Best wishes, Pete.
Not as war is seen as a business. chuq
I am totally confident that the incoming administration will do a bang up job of oversight on the question of waste in the pentagon and they will undoubtedly decide to cut spending on the pentagon so that they can enjoy more of the fruits of their own labors in running government affairs. I am sure they can find ways to use the money they take away from the pentagon on their own pet projects, none of which will be concerned with defense of the nation. Just my opinion and my opinion, which isn’t worth the shovel to dig it with, is subject to immediate change when I sense an opportunity to capitalize on such as move….everyone knows that I am an opportunist. A person cannot make a billion dollars and lose most of it in a lifetime without being an opportunist. I just am not a smart opportunist. I am just a lovable and good looking old opportunist.
Nope the industry owns the Pentagon…they will continue to roll in dough as long as we have a war department. chuq