The Pentagon is in crisis: The war in Iraq is entering its fifth hot summer. And while U.S. troop casualties are down, the light at the end of the occupation tunnel is no closer and no brighter.
Headaches mount on the home front as well. The head of the Air Force was recently embarrassed and forced from the cockpit. Billions of dollars have been misplaced or misspent. Huge cost overruns bedevil weapons contractors. And, private contractors have formed a cubicle mercenary force, outnumbering uniformed personnel and federal employees in many DoD agencies.
The Government Accountability Office has issued a series of reports on these problems. While the watchdog agency sticks to the script of analytic bureaucratese, what they document is cumulatively damning to business as usual at the Pentagon.
Money Problems
The Pentagon has its work cut out for it. Keeping track of its more than half trillion dollar budget and the hundreds of billions more in war spending is no easy task. There is bound to be some slippage here and there. But the Pentagon’s Inspector General’s Office recently reported to Congress that the Pentagon is unable to account for nearly $15 billion earmarked for the Iraq reconstruction effort. In a May report to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Inspector General’s Office highlights $7.8 billion paid to contractors for everything from telephones to trucks without any support documentation—like a check for $5.6 million to an Iraqi contractor. For what? No one knows. Or the $32 million doled out to build a facility for the Iraqi military. Never built. Why not? No one knows.
One reason that money just seems to disappear is that there are not enough people watching the books. While the Pentagon budget has soared in the past seven years, the resources and staff time devoted to making sure that money is well spent have not increased.
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5292
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
