It was a casually-delivered announcement on a typical September 10 when the Pentagon revealed it had lost 2.3 trillion dollars. It was a staggering sum and the public outrage promised to be high. However, 9/11 happened the next day and the missing trillions were forgotten.
No one has ever been held accountable or made to withstand scrutiny when it comes to the loss of those 2.3 trillion dollars. Evidence, unfortunately for the American public, was destroyed when that massive 767 was crashed into the Pentagon by Islamic maniacs.
One would consider that the start of the two decade war against Al-Qaeda and associated forces would force the government to tighten its financial belt; but that is very far from the case, however. The Pentagon delivered plane-fulls of money to Afghan officials. Over 60 billion dollars cannot be accounted for in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The story is very disturbing in Iraq, where the government cannot account for over 12 billion dollars. In what represented the biggest cash airlift in history, Iraq's money was stolen from its people. It seems that the Pentagon has a problem with keeping track of cash, and also black money.
The Pentagon's black budget of 51 billion dollars -- combined with the Military Intelligence Program of 19 billion, and the National Intelligence Program of around 50 billion -- means that the government will dish out more than 120 billion dollars in black money. The US government black budget is 50 billion dollars higher than Russia's military budget and just lower than the Chinese. That 120 billion dollar figure, I should add, is only an estimate since the Pentagon has another classified program where the budgets don't add up with the programs.
It was Eisenhower who warned about the military-industrial complex in his farewell address. The very last thing he did as president was to warn the nation of what was to come. And indeed, if the government can mismanage so much money and receive almost no public scrutiny, one can only wonder how much little we know about other classified projects.
