Earth to Pentagon: Follow the Freaking Money!
David Isenberg, Huffington Post, 12 September 2010
Author, Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq
QUOTE FROM IG REPORT: Early-on in the review, the staff identified one all-important, central element that is adversely affecting every facet of the OIG audit program — the DOD's broken accounting system. This dysfunctional system is driving the audit freight train. The success or failure of an audit turns on the quality of financial data available for audit by competent examiners. Unfortunately, the quality of the financial data presented to OIG auditors by DOD during the period reviewed by the staff should probably be rated as poor to non-existent. Having lost control of the money at the transaction level, DOD's broken accounting system is incapable of generating accurate financial records. The consequences are predictable. Most of the time, OIG auditors report: “no audit trail” found.
Phi Beta Iota: The people managing the Pentagon are very smart. The financial system is broken because they want it that way and Congress and We the People have let them get away with it since World War II. This is not rocket science. CISCO closes its books every single night. The Pentagon and Wall Street are the last two crap games in town, and both are rigged. Below is the headline with link to History Commons, and for convenience, the full entry there:
September 10, 2001: Rumsfeld Announces Defense Department Cannot Track $2.3 Trillion in Transactions
In a speech to the Department of Defense, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld announces that the Department of Defense “cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.” CBS later calculates that 25 percent of the yearly defense budget is unaccounted for, and quotes a long-time defense budget analyst: “[Their] numbers are pie in the sky. The books are
cooked routinely year after year.” Coverage of this rather shocking story is nearly nonexistent given the events of the next day. [US Department of Defense, 9/10/2001; CBS News, 1/29/2002] In April 2002 it will be revealed that $1.1 trillion of the missing money comes from the 2000 fiscal year. Auditors won’t even quantify how much money is
missing from fiscal year 2001, causing “some [to] fear it’s worse” than 2000. The Department of the Army will state that it won’t publish a stand-alone financial statement for 2001 because of “the loss of financial-management personnel sustained during the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.” [Insight, 4/29/2002] This $1.1 trillion plus unknown additional amounts continues to remain unaccounted for, and auditors say it may take eight years of reorganization before a proper accounting can be done. [Insight, 8/21/2003]
