Capacity to wage war includes competence to manage the expense

by YankeeJim | July 27, 2010 at 03:11 am

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The US military has demonstrated by countless examples that its systems and its management are incapable of managing the peoples’ money in times of war. When the nation is struggling with enormous debt, largely created by fighting elective wars, it is a continuous insult to see the Department of Defense failing to account for huge sums, often involving the administration of money toward nation building.

While it is the Department of Defense that spends money on ill-conceived weapon systems programs that are often driven by the military industrial complex that is little more than the biggest welfare recipient in history, overarching responsibility is with the Executive branch and Congress.

Congressional representatives do not want to cut favored programs. They are corrupted by greed and lack of objectivity. The executive branch often lacks competence to manage. The accounting and financial systems are flawed, and even the accounting firms that are intended to provide ethical oversight are corrupted by conflicts of interest.

We the people find no good excuses.

“Pentagon can't account for how it spent $2.6 billion in Iraqi funds, audit finds

By Ernesto Londoño

Washington Post staff writer
Tuesday, July 27, 2010

BAGHDAD -- Because of poor record-keeping and lax oversight, the Department of Defense cannot account for how it spent $2.6 billion that belonged to the Iraqi government, according to the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

An audit of a $9.1 billion fund of Iraqi oil proceeds showed that most American military agencies entrusted with spending the money on reconstruction projects failed to adhere to U.S. rules on how such money must be tracked and spent, the inspector general found.

U.S. officials failed to create bank accounts for $8.7 billion in the Development Fund for Iraq, as mandated by the Department of Treasury, creating "breakdowns in controls [that] left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss," according to the report, which is scheduled to be released Tuesday.

The audit is the latest probe to fault the U.S. government for mismanagement of Iraqi funds in the years following the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, which led to an insurgency and a years-long occupation.

"Weak oversight is directly correlated to increased numbers of cases of theft and abuse, with the majority of convictions to date being traceable to the 2003-2004 time-frame where accounting practices were weakest," Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said in an e-mail.

The report also said the U.S. military continues to hold at least $34.3 million of the fund, even though it was required to return it to the Iraqi government in December 2007.”