$8.5trillion... what $8.5 trillion?
 

Holy shit

The Pentagon Doesn't Know What it Spent 8.5 Trillion Dollars on

I'm sure the UK (where I'm from) gov't is equally as wasteful, in their own way :helpme

call me a liberal socialist but i'd rather spend money on homeless and poor people than Humvee front suspensions

:thumbsup

I get it's nowhere near as simple as that, but yup. There's big money in fear though :Oh crap

Unbelievable...

Up to a point. The poor should be able to sustain but should have an uncomfortable life so that they have a desire to improve themselves.

I remember in my youth a pastor saying that Madagascar was suffering from poverty, hunger, disease and you send missionaries over there. There were over 100,000 in the population at the time.
They gave them food and medicine, guess what happened?!... 1,000,000 people living in disease and poverty. It has to be thought out.

Lots of waste in government though, projects that are money pits continue to operate on and one whereas in real business it disappears rather quickly.

If only the money not spent on the Humvee from suspensions went to the homeless an the poor... unfortunately it would likely be squandered somewhere else...

just to add, I've done zero research on where the numbers were gleaned from, gonna leave that to Rochard :thumbsup

Can't wait for Robbie to see this though :D

yeah, well, I know the world isn't that easy - but I also know that not all poor people, especially children, are lazy leeches.

I donate every year to a project where children from poor families can go and get warm food, help with homework or just play and be children - because sometimes parents are the worst enemies of their own children.

And I would love to see more money in projects like that - instead of giving money to parents that blow it on smokes and alcohol.

and I am pretty sure that if we raise children with proper education and a sense for the community, we also need less money for weapons AND food stamps in the future

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

I bet they are not ... I bet they've never had 8.5 trillion to lose.


Anyway, if they did, it would all go to disabled immigrant lesbian non-English speaking ethnic minority's against the bomb / for the whales recovering addicts.

'in their own way'

ps I'm a recovering addict :winkwink:

I'm here. What's that matter?

I'm sure the Pentagon has no clue of what we spent. We are talking about trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of people who might have access to spend said money, and tens of thousands more who try to track it. The article mentions a single mistake that resulted in a $500 million error. Opps.

Good luck with this.

And I am guessing this is the tip of the ice berg. Imagine what the entire US government blows on a regular basis.

^ as in, if someone comes back and says 'but this figure shows it's blahblah amount' - I'm way too lazy to check that shit, you usually will do a bit of research first :thumbsup

This is why there are such issues with government based health care here.. It's not that people don't want everyone to have health care 100%, the fact is that almost every single person did. The bigger problem is that the government then gets in the middle and takes a situation from bad to worse, costs go up, inefficiencies increase across the board etc. This is why so many people here think government is not the answer. Government is just never held accountable for waste and inefficiency and when they are in the middle, everyone loses.

while i'm not defending the military, i think what the article is stating is that since 1996, the defense dept has spent $8.5 trillion total dollars and the accounting for that total sum is not audit ready.

The article says.....

"Audits of all federal agencies were mandated by law beginning in 1996, but the Pentagon is unique in never having complied. In almost 20 years, the Pentagon has never accounted for trillions it spent, in part because ?plugging??fudging the numbers?is standard operating procedure."

I translate this not as "the Pentagon doesn't know what it's spent since 1996" but instead that the Pentagon hasn't filed an audit since then. Of course, saying the "Pentagon doesn't know how it spent $8 trillion" is a much more interesting headline than "Pentagon misses filing deadline".

So of course someone will have to step up and demand we do an audit will will.... require a staff of thousands and most likely take a decade to complete and.... Cost... hundreds of millions.

Good job USA.

Hookers/Blow filed under guest entertainment :thumbsup

ISIS guys raise hell in those Humvees, drifting in the desert and stuff. The front suspensions are covered under the warranty as long as the receipt was left in the glove box.

if it helps - you're not alone

the Germans spent millions - if not billions - on a drone that is not allowed to fly in german airspace, a tank that has brakes that are too weak for the engine, a marine helicopter that doesn't do well over water, a transport airplane that doesn't transport what it is supposed to carry and cannot drop paratroopers, a rifle that overheats and then doesn't hit the target anymore, another helicopter with the wrong gun that cannot be replaced and while the Eurofighter might in theory be a great aircraft, something like 60 or 70% of them are grounded due to missing parts.

this is what makes be believe that Putin really doesn't want to attack the rest of Europe cause it would be a cakewalk

From past experience (reading the news, watching the Senate hearings) with Pentagon and administrations this isn't about waste probably but about spending on programs that are illegal are not officially approved. Say, IS, AL-qaeda, bio-tech, nuclear development. Iran-Contra...the list is endless. Developing and releasing MERS is not cheap, dammit. :upsidedow
Okay, maybe a little waste. :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Where would ISIS get their Hummers though?

That is pretty insane considered the current US debt is over 18 trillion. The Federal Reserve owns about 3.5 trillion in debt.

I remember seeing pallets of cash being shipped into Iraq. Somebody knows where that cash went.
How the US sent $12bn in cash to Iraq. And watched it vanish | World news | The Guardian

The thing is, if we quit giving our money away to other countries and kept it to ourselves, we'd be in a MUCH better place. It's a shame how we worry about other countries before our own people, we cut funding for this program and that program, but yet we'll open our wallets and gladly hand over millions to another country in need.

this is complete bullshit...the USA is not in the business of giving aid...it gives """"aid"""" (read: bribe) and makes the countries pay it back in one form or another...if you do not accept """""Aid"""" they bomb you or kill you and then get the next politician to accept """"aid""""

to claim that the USA gives money for altruistic reasons is very very amusing :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

It is only 8.5 Trillions$....:1orglaugh

That article doesn't actually say that Pentagon doesn't know to where it spent the money; it just doesn't do/ response to audits.

Accounting for all the money isn't considered important, while making certain that the funding never stops is absolutely critical.

:flagface

To me that sounds like there is even more reason to attack if it is a piece of cake. Adolf did conclusions like that too (piece cake + some lebensraum-> attack).

oh please.. those skirmishes wouldn't even make a dent in 8 trillion. sending over some crates of used ak's and rpg's is and always will be cheap. not even 100 million in all of that. It has more to do with economic restructure that went off the books since the 2007 collapse I'm sure.

why can't we all just get along? there is no reason for war if we give peace a chance.

Because America... that's why.

the us military?