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the thesis of the cover-up of the 2.3 trillions (!) "lost" (!) by pentagon and made public on the 10-09-01 (!) shall not be underestimate
The technology revolution has transformed organizations across the private sector, but not ours, not fully, not yet. We are, as they say, tangled in our anchor chain. Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it's stored on dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible.
We maintain 20 to 25 percent more base infrastructure than we need to support our forces, at an annual waste to taxpayers of some $3 billion to $4 billion. Fully half of our resources go to infrastructure and overhead, and in addition to draining resources from warfighting, these costly and outdated systems, procedures and programs stifle innovation as well. A new idea must often survive the gauntlet of some 17 levels of bureaucracy to make it from a line officer's to my desk
Pentagon's finances in disarray
By JOHN M. DONNELLY The Associated Press 03/03/00 5:44 PM Eastern
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The military's money managers last year made almost $7 trillion in adjustments to their financial ledgers in an attempt to make them add up, the Pentagon's inspector general said in a report released Friday.
The Pentagon could not show receipts for $2.3 trillion of those changes, and half a trillion dollars of it was just corrections of mistakes made in earlier adjustments.
Senator Byrd: That audit report found that out of $7.6 trillion in department-level accounting interest, 2.3 trillion in entries either did not contain adequate documentation or were improperly reconciled or were made to force buyer and seller data to agree
It is truly hilarious to watch you continue to jump into threads and spout off opinions which have no basis in reality.
Your opinion is that the 2.3 trillion was used to pay for the attack...and you still dont understand that, at that time, the entire federal budget was less than 1.5 trillion. So, for your opinion to be accurate, the entire government had NO money for over a year. And you still dont understand how ridiculous that idea is.
In addition, you bring up how everybody that was investigating the subject was murdered and the records destroyed (another patently absurd belief). The Pentagon mainframes werent destroyed and the majority of the GAO auditors dont work in the Pentagon. But go ahead, keep believing your theories. They keep your eyes off the ball.
The War On Waste
Defense Department Cannot Account For 25% Of Funds — $2.3 Trillion
(CBS) On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, "the adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy," he said.
He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat.
"In fact, it could be said it's a matter of life and death," he said.
Rumsfeld promised change but the next day – Sept. 11-- the world changed and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to have been forgotten.
Just last week President Bush announced, "my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending."
More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.
"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.
$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.
"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.
Minnery, a former Marine turned whistle-blower, is risking his job by speaking out for the first time about the millions he noticed were missing from one defense agency's balance sheets. Minnery tried to follow the money trail, even crisscrossing the country looking for records.
"The director looked at me and said 'Why do you care about this stuff?' It took me aback, you know? My supervisor asking me why I care about doing a good job," said Minnery.
He was reassigned and says officials then covered up the problem by just writing it off.
"They have to cover it up," he said. "That's where the corruption comes in. They have to cover up the fact that they can't do the job."
The Pentagon's Inspector General "partially substantiated" several of Minnery's allegations but could not prove officials tried "to manipulate the financial statements."
Thank you for once again reinforcing my post. Keep chasing ghosts.
Not to mention, thanks for posting a story that shows, once again, CBS News is a joke.