
The Pentagon Can't Account for $21T - da02
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-pentagon-cant-account-for-21-trillion/
======
brd529
The tone and vulgar word choices of the article undermine its credibility. I’m
glad they did because it inspired me to google the issue. Second result
debunks it:

[https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-
missing-21-trillion-6-5-tr...](https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-
missing-21-trillion-6-5-trillion-2-3-trillion-journal-vouchers.t9718/)

Per the DOD comptroller, the unsupported journal adjustments are a technical
accounting term

> when the military has to make quarterly or year-end financial statements,
> some entries, like the value of certain assets (like aircraft carriers) or
> liabilities (like pensions), have to be transferred either manually or by an
> automated but uncertified system. Because of this it's marked as
> "unsupported" because it lacks a rigorous audit trail. But it's not missing.
> It's just a long list of entries, like the value of the Navy's ships, that
> don't meet proper accounting standards

~~~
3131s
This article is terrible, but there are much better sources:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army/u-s-
army-f...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-audit-army/u-s-army-fudged-
its-accounts-by-trillions-of-dollars-auditor-finds-idUSKCN10U1IG)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-
go...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-government-
spent-21-trillion-of-our-money-without-telling-us/)

" _The Defense Department’s Inspector General, in a June report, said the Army
made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one
quarter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year. Yet the Army lacked
receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up._ "

The total of 21 trillion includes "adjustments" made by the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development in addition to branches of the Pentagon.

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archgoon
The pentagon's budget is only[1][2] about 600 billion dollars a year, over the
17 year period. This is saying they can't account for over 35 years of budget.

I don't understand how this number can possibly be correct in the sense that
it's being presented. The article doesn't really explain it, can someone
explain how the numbers add up? Is the Pentagon running a hedge fun in the
background along with it's funding from congress?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States)

[2] I don't typically use the word 'only' to describe the US military budget.

~~~
rosser
Opening paragraph of The Fine Article's linked Forbes source:

> _On July 26, 2016, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a report
> “Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported”. The
> report indicates that for fiscal year 2015 the Army failed to provide
> adequate support for $6.5 trillion in journal voucher adjustments. According
> to the GAO 's Comptroller General, "Journal vouchers are summary-level
> accounting adjustments made when balances between systems cannot be
> reconciled. Often these journal vouchers are unsupported, meaning they lack
> supporting documentation to justify the adjustment or are not tied to
> specific accounting transactions…. For an auditor, journal vouchers are a
> red flag for transactions not being captured, reported, or summarized
> correctly."_ [1]

This isn't actually _necessarily_ money that's been spent illegitimately or
secretly, or something. It sounds more like sloppy bookkeeping.

Note also that the author also writes for RT. It doesn't make him wrong, but
it does invite scrutiny into the underlying narratives this piece was penned
to support; they probably aren't just on the level of "Army bad at
accounting."

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-
go...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-government-
spent-21-trillion-of-our-money-without-telling-us/#134b46da7aef)

------
fharper1961
For a some explanations of what happened:
[https://www.metabunk.org/explained-6-5-trillion-
unsupported-...](https://www.metabunk.org/explained-6-5-trillion-unsupported-
and-undocumented-in-2015-financial-statement.t7845/)

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manav
Stargate program.

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some_account
Why are people surprised by this? It seems so naive to think they would be
upfront with their massive secret, dark projects.

~~~
6nf
I hope most of the money goes into high tech secret projects but I suspect a
lot of it is just paying off dictators with pallets full of cash.

~~~
mtgx
The whole "military investments have helped tech so much!" is _so overhyped_.

If you had put the same amount of money into research grants, you would've
obtained 100x the commercial inventions we eventually got mainly by accident
from the military.

~~~
analognoise
Real tech (hardcore stuff: chips, systems, radios, satellites, supercomputers,
etc).

If you mean the latest subscription service for cat videos (or "like Uber, but
for..." type trash) then no, the military doesn't help with those things.

~~~
petra
To be fair, OP talked about research grants , not VC for crap.

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timavr
I hope they are building space ships to protect against incoming alien
invasion which they discovered via time machine they built 10 years ago.

