Pentagon bloat, etc. thread

[Vrede too]

Military Budget Still Unaudited, Unaccountable for Lost Trillions

I was going to quote shocking numbers, but that would be virtually every paragraph.

US Reverses Pledge to Stop Use of Cluster Bombs

:cussing:

[Vrede too]

Tell the Senate: Veterans deserve better than Robert Wilkie



... First, Trump fired VA Secretary David Shulkin for opposing the White House's efforts to hand parts of the VA over to Wall Street and for-profit companies. Then, Trump tried to install his unqualified personal doctor, Ronny Jackson, only to see the nomination backfire when Jackson's turbulent history and mismanagement came to light. Now, Trump has nominated Department of Defense official Robert Wilkie, who has his own skeletons in his closet.3 Wilkie:

Proudly defended racists like Jesse Helms and Trent Lott. Wilkie worked for and publicly championed former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, who opposed Martin Luther King, Jr. and called LGBTQ Americans “weak, morally sick wretches.” He later defended Trent Lott after the senator praised Strom Thurmond's segregationist campaign for the presidency.

Has his own racist and homophobic track record. Wilkie once attacked a Democratic senator for having “openly courted money from the homosexual community." As executive director of the North Carolina GOP, he defended a racist ad campaign implying there were enough black members of Congress already. On top of it all, he has led the Trump administration's efforts to impose a cruel transgender ban on the military.

Crusaded for the confederate cause. Wilkie spent years as a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and would appear routinely at annual memorial ceremonies for the Confederacy. He has supported displaying the Confederate flag and once attacked Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, then the sole Black senator, for opposing an effort to patent a logo that included the Confederate flag.

The Secretary of Veterans Affairs serves all veterans, not just straight white southerners. Wilkie's track record will make it impossible for many veterans to believe that he has their best interests at heart. We need to make sure senators of both parties don't deliberately overlook Wilkie's track record and instead oppose his nomination....

Petition to the U.S. Senate:

"Block and resist Robert Wilkie's nomination to serve as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. His racist and anti-LGBTQ history and record of defending hateful individuals and institutions is unbefitting of the office."

On behalf of the sane and decent people of North Carolina - We're sorry, veterans.

[Vrede too]

Terminator?

Addressing the Risks of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Through the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons

[Vrede too]

How Pro-War Democrats Use Russiagate To Bloat the Military—And Why That’s Dangerous
Russia became the bipartisan justification for an $716 billion defense budget and nuclear build-up.

Crap.

[Vrede too]

[billy.pilgrim]

https://taskandpurpose.com/army-investi ... -debarros/

[Vrede too]

https://taskandpurpose.com/army-investi ... -debarros/

Thanks. September 2, 2018 update, not much new info:

Army Capt. Brittany DeBarros under scrutiny for tweeting facts

[billy.pilgrim]

https://taskandpurpose.com/army-investi ... -debarros/

Thanks. September 2, 2018 update, not much new info:

Army Capt. Brittany DeBarros under scrutiny for tweeting facts

damn those facts. I thought we were over that crap.

[Vrede too]

Human Cost of the Post-9/11 Wars:
Lethality and the Need for Transparency

All told, between 480,000 and 507,000 people have been killed in the United States’ post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan ("incomplete").

Of these, 244,124 to 266,427 were civilians.

This tally of the counts and estimates of direct deaths caused by war violence does not include the more than 500,000 deaths from the war in Syria, raging since 2011, which the US joined in August 2014.

Of course, the tragedy in Syria can be traced directly to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq based on hundreds of lies.

In addition, this tally does not include “indirect deaths.” Indirect harm occurs when wars’ destruction leads to long term, “indirect,” consequences for people’s health in war zones, for example because of loss of access to food, water, health facilities, electricity or other infrastructure.

No surprise that they hate us.

[Vrede too]

(US) Cost of Wars Exceeds $5.9 Trillion (since 9/11)

The US national debt is about 22 trillion. So, about 27% of it is due mostly to the Iraq then Syria fiasco based on hundreds of lies and the 17+ year occupation of the Graveyard of Empires, Afghanistan. This $5.9 trillion does not include the "normal" spending on the bloated Pentagon and other military programs like at NASA, the VA and DOE.

[billy.pilgrim]

(US) Cost of Wars Exceeds $5.9 Trillion (since 9/11)

The US national debt is about 22 trillion. So, about 27% of it is due mostly to the Iraq then Syria fiasco based on hundreds of lies and the 17+ year occupation of the Graveyard of Empires, Afghanistan. This $5.9 trillion does not include the "normal" spending on the bloated Pentagon and other military programs like at NASA, the VA and DOE.

Jimmy Carter - best president ever.

We have to end our dependence on oil and the ME crazies.

Reagan, W and O - top the list for worse.

We don't need no fucking renewables. Our people want oil and really big cars. If it means a forever war, who cares - consider it as a leo training ground.

[Vrede too]

Afghanistan -
Invasion understandable and predictable.
Occupation mucked up by Shrub when he invaded Iraq based on hundreds of lies.
Obama escalation a mistake.
Dolt .45 escalation a mistake.

Syria -
Direct result of Shrub's invasion of Iraq based on hundreds of lies and mucked up occupation.
Made worse by Obama and Dolt .45's lethal intervention.

I'm glad we may be leaving both, but Dolt .45 has sure screwed up making it happen. He could have done it with a lot more applause if he'd lined up supporters ahead of time. Now, everyone correctly thinks that he's a naive loose cannon.

[Vrede too]

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to announce that Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan will take over from Jim Mattis as acting secretary of defense as of Jan., a senior U.S. administration official told Reuters.

Patrick M. Shanahan:
No relevant education, just like Dolt .45.
No military service, just like the Chickenhawk in Chief.
Career merchant of death, Boeing. Ike is saying, "I warned you."

Also, O Really, University of Washington grad and Regent.

[neoplacebo]

Yeah, but I wouldn't dismiss that MIT management degree. Hell, this guy can't be any worse than Rumsfeld unless we decide to invade North Korea. I decided to find out how many Defense secretaries have military service. Of the 26 on the list ( I didn't count two who were "acting" secretaries and thus never confirmed by Senate) seven never served in the military, most notably Dick Cheney. So, this means 27% of them have no military experience.

[Vrede too]

Exclusive: The Pentagon’s Massive Accounting Fraud Exposed
How US military spending keeps rising even as the Pentagon flunks its audit.

On November 15, Ernst & Young and other private firms that were hired to audit the Pentagon announced that they could not complete the job. Congress had ordered an independent audit of the Department of Defense, the government’s largest discretionary cost center—the Pentagon receives 54 cents out of every dollar in federal appropriations—after the Pentagon failed for decades to audit itself. The firms concluded, however, that the DoD’s financial records were riddled with so many bookkeeping deficiencies, irregularities, and errors that a reliable audit was simply impossible.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan tried to put the best face on things, telling reporters, “We failed the audit, but we never expected to pass it.” Shanahan suggested that the DoD should get credit for attempting an audit, saying, “It was an audit on a $2.7 trillion organization, so the fact that we did the audit is substantial.” The truth, though, is that the DoD was dragged kicking and screaming to this audit by bipartisan frustration in Congress, and the result, had this been a major corporation, likely would have been a crashed stock.

As Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, a frequent critic of the DoD’s financial practices, said on the Senate floor in September 2017, the Pentagon’s long-standing failure to conduct a proper audit reflects “twenty-six years of hard-core foot-dragging” on the part of the DoD, where “internal resistance to auditing the books runs deep.” In 1990, Congress passed the Chief Financial Officers Act, which required all departments and agencies of the federal government to develop auditable accounting systems and submit to annual audits. Since then, every department and agency has come into compliance—except the Pentagon.

Now, a Nation investigation has uncovered an explanation for the Pentagon’s foot-dragging: For decades, the DoD’s leaders and accountants have been perpetrating a gigantic, unconstitutional accounting fraud, deliberately cooking the books to mislead the Congress and drive the DoD’s budgets ever higher, regardless of military necessity. DoD has literally been making up numbers in its annual financial reports to Congress—representing trillions of dollars’ worth of seemingly nonexistent transactions—knowing that Congress would rely on those misleading reports when deciding how much money to give the DoD the following year, according to government records and interviews with current and former DoD officials, congressional sources, and independent experts....

[neoplacebo]

I'm reading Bernie Sanders' book "Where We Go From Here" and he mentions this lack of audit several times. I wonder if this report you show will get any response. We'll wait.

[Vrede too]

I'm reading Bernie Sanders' book "Where We Go From Here" and he mentions this lack of audit several times. I wonder if this report you show will get any response. We'll wait.

I remember public discussion of Pentagon corruption, waste, fraud and abuse since at least Vietnam, so . . .

[neoplacebo]

I'm reading Bernie Sanders' book "Where We Go From Here" and he mentions this lack of audit several times. I wonder if this report you show will get any response. We'll wait.

I remember public discussion of Pentagon corruption, waste, fraud and abuse since at least Vietnam, so . . .

Heh, my job in the Navy was OPTAR (operating target) storekeeper; I "kept the books" for everything two different ships spent their money on. The only things I had no part in obtaining were food and stuff sold in the ships' store. But in both commands, there would be a panic near the end of the fiscal year by all departments to spend any and all money they had left in their budgets ( I also prepared each departments quarterly budget numbers by direction) since they figured if they didn't spend it they would get less next year. This was in 75-79 and I would bet anything it has been going on since then and accelerated. Chips ahoy! USS Lockwood (FF-1064) and USS Kilauea (AE-26)

[Vrede too]

Doomsday Clock Scientists Say the Army’s Portable Nuclear Reactor Is a Disaster Waiting To Happen

What could possibly go wrong?

[Vrede too]

Petition to the House of Representatives:

"Co-sponsor and pass H.R.1274, which would repeal the 2001 AUMF Authorization for Use of Military Force – the flawed blank check that authorizes Donald Trump to wage war, anywhere at any time."