Over a mere two decades, the Pentagon lost track of a mind-numbing $10 trillion
— that’s trillion, with a fat, taxpayer-funded “T” — and no one, not
even the Department of Defense, really knows where it went or on what it
was spent.
Even though audits of all federal agencies became mandatory in 1996, the Pentagon has apparently made itself an exception, and — fully 20 years later — stands obstinately orotund in never having complied.
Because, as defense officials insist —
summoning their best impudent adolescent — an audit would take too long
and, unironically, cost too much.
“Over the last 20 years, the Pentagon has broken every promise to Congress about when an audit would be completed,” Rafael DeGennaro, director of Audit the Pentagon, told the Guardian recently. “Meanwhile, Congress has more than doubled the Pentagon’s budget.”
Worse, President Trump’s newly-proposed budget seeks to toss an additional $54 billion
into the evidently bottomless pit that is the U.S. military — more for
interventionist policy, more for resource-plundering, more for proxy
fighting, and, of course, more for jets and drones to drop more bombs
suspiciously often on civilians.
