Today's most buried headline

May 19, 2003 9:28 AM

This week's most buried headlinecould be a real stinker this week for the Pentagon. Apparently over $1 trillion are missing as well as "dozens of tanks, missiles and planes."
posted by jackspace (25 comments total)

A trillion? I can wrap my mind around a million. A million marbles, a million dollars, cool. I've already given up on imagining a billion anything. And now a trillion bucks are missing? Might as well be a gazillion.
posted by kozad at 9:37 AM on May 19, 2003

your tax dollars.... hard at work
posted by swinginjohn at 9:45 AM on May 19, 2003

Mr. Burns took it to Cuba.
posted by condour75 at 9:47 AM on May 19, 2003

"Where the hell did that tank go, officer?"
"Well, sir, we think it's probably with all the missles that we can't seem to find."
posted by Hall at 9:52 AM on May 19, 2003

Damn those looters
posted by johnny7 at 9:53 AM on May 19, 2003

A vital resource for anyone interested in learning about DoD spending is Defense and the National Interest, which has a great deal of readable and well-researched information on defense expenditure and the real cost-efficency of current spending. From their "budget and fiscal realities" page it's pretty clear that the Pentagon has for decades constituted a budgetary back hole with accounting standards that make Enron look like a corner store. You don't need a degree in accounting or political science to realise that there is something wrong with this picture.
posted by Bletch at 9:57 AM on May 19, 2003

If I were to take that trillion in $2s, how many missing C-17 Globemaster's would I need to get it to my secret island lair?
posted by Oddly at 10:02 AM on May 19, 2003

"Apparently over $1 trillion are missing"

Shhhhh...

Don't tell anybody, but it's in my basement.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:02 AM on May 19, 2003

kozad: this is what 1 trillion (well, 1,000,000,016,640) pennies look like. Just imagine one hundred of these.
posted by Bletch at 10:14 AM on May 19, 2003

Well Ari Fleischer won't be the White House apologist for stuff like this much longer.
posted by madamjujujive at 10:16 AM on May 19, 2003

Thanks for that link, Bletch. I'm going to be picking up scattered pieces of brain from my cubicle walls for the rest of the afternoon.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:21 AM on May 19, 2003

I was digging around the DoD Inspector General's page, but I can't seem to even find the report the SFGate mentions. No surprise.
posted by gramcracker at 10:33 AM on May 19, 2003

ok, someone has to say it....


Why do you hate America so much?
posted by Nauip at 11:10 AM on May 19, 2003

Yes, and our wonderful f**king president and his corrupt cronies are trying it make it EASIER for this to happen now. To make LESS accountability and red tape, even though they say they're making it "more fluid" for the DOD and more "flexible." Whatever...SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT THE HELL THIS STUPID PRESIDENT IS THINKING?????? AND WHY IS AMERICA SO BLOODY STUPID THAT THEY DON'T SEE THROUGH HIS CORRUPTION AND LIES AND DISTORTIONS? WHY ISN'T THIS ON THE FRONT PAGES OF ALL NEWSPAPERS ACROSS AMERICA? (So much for the "liberally biased press.")

Yes, I am ranting. But the entire paper this morning had story after story in it about how Bush is screwing up the nation. Bastard.
posted by aacheson at 11:17 AM on May 19, 2003

dhartung clarifies the issue
posted by pots at 11:27 AM on May 19, 2003

...AND WHY IS AMERICA SO BLOODY STUPID THAT THEY DON'T SEE THROUGH HIS CORRUPTION AND LIES AND DISTORTIONS?

We're not as smart as you.

But the entire paper this morning...

Which paper?
posted by Witty at 12:30 PM on May 19, 2003

"Honest officer, had I known my health stood in jeopardy I would never have lit one."
posted by Pressed Rat at 12:36 PM on May 19, 2003

Witty- The National Enquirer.

J/K

Why does it matter? Are you going to scream "liberal press!!!!" I think it's pretty obvious that the press is NOT liberally slanted any more than it's conservatively slanted.

All press right now appears to have no spine to call out these lies and distortions by the administration. Perhaps they fear being curtailed or being arrested? Perhaps because they're all owned by about 5 big companies-which love the bush administration because the Bush Administration sucks their proverbial dicks.

Do you really think that Watergate would have broken in this day and age and environment? The press is now so lazy and complacent-waiting for the stories to come to them and to scared to really report the truth-perhaps because for some reason, to question to Bush administration has become "unpatriotic."

So no, I'm not going to answer your question about what paper it was. It doesn't matter.
posted by aacheson at 1:03 PM on May 19, 2003

Ok... I was just curious.
posted by Witty at 1:10 PM on May 19, 2003

Sorry, I guess I got a little...um..impassioned about that. I'm just so angry and frustrated at the direction this country is taking!
Shouldn't be taking it out on fellow mefiers, though.
posted by aacheson at 1:21 PM on May 19, 2003

I was wondering where that Abrams battle tank in my back yard came from. It just appeared one weekend while I was out of town, and it's ruining my view and rusting all over the lawn. I called the DOD about it but just got a secretary who seemed not to care at all when I told her that it was getting really rusty and that I thought it was a sorry waste of the taxpayer's money. She said that somebody would get back to me. Yeah, right. That was a month ago

I guess I'll have to rent a torch and cut it into pieces myself.
posted by troutfishing at 1:48 PM on May 19, 2003

Metafilter: Not much proverbial dick-sucking over here.
posted by LimePi at 1:56 PM on May 19, 2003

I guess I'll have to rent a torch and cut it into pieces myself.

Hey, you know they left about a dozen crates of RPGs in my basement about six weeks ago... maybe I can save you some time.
posted by Galvatron at 4:28 PM on May 19, 2003

As Sergeant Hulka said to "Psycho" Francis in the movie "Stripes": LIGHTEN UP, FRANCIS!

There is no missing $1 trillion. The article stated that the Pentagon "...couldn't account for more than a trillion dollars in financial transactions."

That's a lot different from $1T going missing. And mind you -- this is very much a cumulative thing -- the vast majority of it has happened over decades, NOT just since President Bush was elected. I'm not necessarily defending the accounting practices or the lack of interoperability between different DoD systems, just pointing out that this article is way too easy to take out of context.
posted by davidmsc at 5:54 PM on May 19, 2003

davidmsc - yeah, right. you're just tickled pink because of the hefty Ebay proceeds from those 10 crates of night vision goggles that fell out of a plane and landed, fortuitiously, in your back yard.

Some people have all the luck.
posted by troutfishing at 8:42 PM on May 22, 2003