The Missing Trillions (Part 1)

CBS News
Jan 29, 2002.

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.


Read the rest of the text here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

Category:

News & Politics

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• The Missing Trillions (Part 1)
• corrupt politicians
• missing trillions
• donald rumsfeld
• defense department

[Kingery4President]

STAND TOGEHTER!

Clean out D.C.!

[motorolarules]

Great information to share, thanks

[ernestpayne]

Dumsfeld pointing the finger at waste and incompetence? As Norman Lear had his character Archy Bunker say "a case of black calling the kettle pot"

[silvermediastudio]

Wait.. if you can't get the records, and it's missing, and there's no tracing it.. how do you estimate how much it is?

[CaptJJYossarian]

How to make up for our shortfalls in the Trillions...

Here's an idea, we could bomb our own cities, blame it on a foreign government, invade them and then rob them blind.

Or we could try the school bully approach: threaten to blow up the planet if the entire world population doesn't give us thier lunch money for the next 10 years.

And when all that fails then we could institute a flat 94% tax rate on anyone who works withing 50 miles of Washington DC or WallStreet.

[meka4996]

rules? Who does the persecution? a country can't print their own money?? Countries need to be told what they should do or get punished?? What a Slave county! Just search on youtube "printing money"...

[xxxslayerxxx666]

it's not as simple as that, there are rules....korea(north i think) had the same logic as you,and they got persecuted for that, but i'm sure there are loopholes, i'm positive that we have bartered with other countries so they can print more money for us, cause a country can't print their own money, and again korea has tried printing their own money.

[meka4996]

Who cares? Just keep printing the money!

[bigc028282]

Wow, add that to Bushtard and Obuma bailout related crimes, and you have a lot of money. Every year a huge number goes to the misappropriation by the black gov.

Considering it's been over 100 years since the last time we had a solar storm that would destroy today's power grid, you would think they could have been spending money on that; instead of D.U.M.B.'s