The greatest robbery of the last 100 years–committed by the Pentagon!

over eight billion dollars in American hundred dollar bills, shrink wrapped and palletized, loaded on big Cargo jets and sent off to Iraq Never to be seen again It is one thing to overcharge the government, but quite another indeed to just walk off with billions in cold hard cash..

PB

That bizarre and frightening episode, worthy of Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone", and the fact that it has basically completely been swept under the rug, suppressed, ignored and forgotten, still blows my mind.

And then there was the $9T in unaccounted for off-balance sheet transactions at the Fed.


America has been mugged more than an old lady in Central Park at 2 a.m.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children".

:cry:

And the last President we had who could be this honest with us was a Republican??? How did we get here?

...it keeps telling the truth no matter which way I turn me head.

Thanks....

:hi:

The Pentagon and military budgets are completely out of control and are taking are country into bankruptcy and third-world status. This administration continues to spend at historic levels exacerbating the problem.

and the Pentagon was hit where the accounting offices were?

McKinney questioning Rumsfeld about the missing trillions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eootfzAhAoU

Rumsfeld's remarks were delivered in a publicly reported meeting and dealt with outdated accounting systems that couldn't track transactions properly. This wasn't a crime that needed to be "investigated", it was a process issue that needed to be addressed. Do you actually believe if $2.3T was really "missing", the SecDef would announce it???

This is just more embarrassing "9/11 was an inside job" bullshit.

involved.

Even SEC and National Guard files seem to go missing.

I knew that the Pentagon budget was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme 20 years ago.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3552883

Transcript of Representative Cynthia McKinney's Exchange with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, and Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Tina Jonas, March 11th, 2005

Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld in House Hearing on FY06 Dept. of Defense Budget
Chairman Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and witnesses Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and JCS Chairman General Richard Myers hold a House Hearing on the FY 2006 Budget for the Department of Defense and Military Services.

3/11/2005: WASHINGTON, DC: 2 hr. 5 min.

CMK: Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA)
DR: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
RM: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers
TJ: Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Tina Jonas
DH: Chairman Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA)

25:20
]CMK: Thank you Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, I watched President Bush deliver a moving speech at the United Nations in September 2003, in which he mentioned the crisis of the sex trade. The President called for the punishment of those involved in this horrible business. But at the very moment of that speech, DynCorp was exposed for having been involved in the buying and selling of young women and children. While all of this was going on, DynCorp kept the Pentagon contract to administer the smallpox and anthrax vaccines, and is now working on a plague vaccine through the Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program. Mr. Secretary, is it policy of the U.S. Government to reward companies that traffic in women and little girls?

That's my first question. My second question, Mr. Secretary: according to the Comptroller General of the United States, there are serious financial management problems at the Pentagon, to which Mr. Cooper alluded.

Fiscal Year 1999: $2.3 trillion missing.

Fiscal Year 2000, $1.1 trillion missing.

And DoD is the number one reason why the government can't balance its checkbook. The Pentagon has claimed year after year that the reason it can't account for the money is because its computers don't communicate with each other.

My second question, Mr. Secretary, is who has the contracts today, to make those systems communicate with each other? How long have they had those contracts, and how much have the taxpayers paid for them?

Finally Mr. Secretary, after the last Hearing, I thought that my office was promised a written response to my question regarding the four wargames on September 11th. I have not yet received that response, but would like for you to respond to the questions that I've put to you today. And then I do expect the written response to my previous question - hopefully by the end of the week.

<snip>

if this is a factor in the vicious attacks on McKinney's character.
She was also the FIRST to call for Bush's impeachment.
Yet, the mere mention of her name brings hateful attacks.

with the biggest target on their back. IMHO, Cynthia has more guts than every single member of the Senate and House.

I've never read a thread re McKinney that wasn't replete w/pitch black venom-spew from such crusaders

It's funny, when I came to DU over 5 years ago,it seemed a kinder, gentler place and every year it has become more and more belligerent with keyboard bullies.

We have the best most expensive military toys money can buy.

$355 million dollar F-22 fighters.

$239 million dollar F-35s fighters.

$218 million dollar C-17s cargo aircraft.

$70 million dollar MV-22 Ospreys.

$5+ billion dollar destroyers.

$466 thousand dollar NLOS rockets.

$6 billion dollar submarines.

$11.5 billion dollar aircraft carriers.

And my POS congresscritter Steve Lynch loves the MIC. And military budgets.

We are being taken over not only by the banksters but also the fucking military. The military is going to bankrupt our country and reduce civilian lives to poverty. I am for striving for peace at all costs. War is only for defending our country from other "countries" who attack us on our soil. El Kabong is a renegade criminal gang ...not a fucking country! But go ahead and keep attacking me for making my intense hatred for the military known ...I don't give a fuck what you think about me.

One side scares you to death, the other side profits when you do.

the wars have offered an excellent opportunity to advance treatments of severe head and brain injuries!

:sarcasm:

(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.

...snip...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

spends".

The keyword there, of course, is "spends". Simple question. If the Pentagon "spent" it, in what sense is it "missing"?

This is just more evidence that the "9/11 was an inside job" crowd harnesses words like "missing" to imply transactions that can't be tracked properly because of antiquated accounting systems has been "stolen".

Does anyone here really think that $2.3T was really "stolen" and 9/11 was staged to cover it up?

I find it more interesting to point out the "always defending the military industrial complex" crowd.

announces Rumsfeld.

On a Monday night.

Not the usual Friday news dump.

On the night before MIHOP.

if it was "missing" and you wanted to cover it up, why on earth would you announce it?

Do you guys actually think before you parrot these goofy conspiracy theories?

blatant theft, accounts for most of the missing prosperity.

Wall Street is terrible, but they are rank amateurs compared to the military contractors and their blood-sucking lapdogs.

Descent is terrorism therefore I can not speak of how much I hate our fucking military without upsetting the troop supporter cheer leaders.

Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. - Henry Kissinger

You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.- Abbie Hoffman

Blind obedience to authority is the enemy of the truth. - Albert Einstein

That worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor . . . This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism–how passionately I hate them! – Albert Einstein

I like that, nice.:thumbsup:

Perhaps ironically it was a two-star, two-time MoH recipient that laid out the ideal American military force. http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.pdf">War is a Racket, by Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler

Much thanks for that ---> http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.pdf I'm sure that Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler has to say will be ignored by most people.

powerful quotes

I had hoped that after Vietnam people would really think twice about putting on a uniform to serve people who will use you, and lie to you about their true objectives. That Kissinger quote really captures that.

It's time to end the charade of military being the primary 'problem solver' in the world.
It's time to leave childish things behind.


"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom. "
Martin Luther King, Jr.

fabricated.

:rofl:
:kick:

My brother was an auditor for the Dept. of Defense back in the 80's through the 90's. To start, labeling it as the Pentagon budget being the problem is incorrect, it is not the budget, it is how they do business. It is not the Pentagon that profits but rather the contractors they do business with. There are two main reasons it is so easy to rip off the government:

1 - What the auditors get to balance - Even for "small" projects they get reams of paper with part numbers (no names) and cost, one entry for every individual part. These would have to be cross referenced with what the actual part was. All of this then summed up to the various different level to what the parts made up (be it a product or a service). Very time consuming and labor intensive, also very easy to miss something since you were on a schedule. Which leads to...

2 - Not anywhere near enough auditors - Auditors were shuffled from place to place, given to many projects to review and not enough time to review them.

One additional thing the government does very wrong is when they do catch someone... They do not prosecute them and get all of the money back, instead they deal with them. They make a deal and take a refund for a small percentage and a promise not to do it again... Regardless of how many times it happens.

Bottom line - It is viewed as a necessary evil. Big military keeps America big and bad, the money pumped into the military keeps a lot of money flowing into the economy. That said, I'm not endorsing the thought, I am simply reporting what the mind set was at the time.

:-(

Despite it's incompetence, it's fraudulent practices, and downright corruption, the congress still shovels our money into it at the first wave of the flag or it's erection of a new bogeyman.

My dad was a veteran of WWII he flew in the Navy. You would have never known it by talking to him. the only thing he kept was a seaman's radioman patch in the top drawer of his dresser. People didn't come up to him and give these adoring platitudes thanking him for his service, he didn't have Navy stickers all over his car, he didn't go to Veteran's day events or anything like that. Compare that to DU where you can't make a post about War or the military without somebody bragging about their service and 20 people then thanking them for that service.

I spent 4 long, seemingly eternal, years doing absolutely nothing of benefit to anyone but the MIC and their politician stooges.

Gulf I was that reboot. I remember there were ticker tape parades for the returning troops after the Gulf War media war and that war was mostly fought in the media.

you rarely ever see the defense budget included.

What you do see - always - are entitlements and how the entitlements are killing the budget.

Every time I see this my head wants to explode.

destruction of the dollar, and in turn the economy as a whole, with no industry to back it up. There will, however, be plenty of GOON SQUAD careers available to keep the people in line. Then we can start giving America "back to nature" as the high priest of the UN Environmental Program, Maurice Strong has been advocating for more than 20 years. Of course, he will keep his billions made from oil and derivatives.

Oh wait, this is already happening: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/To-save-itself-Detroit-plans-to-shrink/articleshow/5665326.cms. Must be a coincidence.:eyes:

The coming age of austerity is for US, not the big boys. Same story all throughout history.

this military juggernaut.