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May 12, 2006

The credibility gap of BushCo

KnightRidder's Washington Bureau is reporting that the Defense Department's "accounting practices are in such disarray that defense officials can't track how much equipment the military owns, where it all is or exactly how they spend defense dollars every year, according to a report Thursday by a nongovernmental group."

The report by Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities called the Pentagon's financial-management practices "an embarrassment" that wouldn't pass muster in the private sector.

"Today, if the Defense Department were a private business it would be involved in a major scandal," said Kwai Chan, a former top official with the Government Accountability Office and the report's author.

Chan said that the findings lend credence to accusations by defense analysts that the DOD squanders billions of dollars every year on weapons "that are irrelevant to fighting terrorists and the Iraq war."

That's only one of the issues this troubling report raises, though.

Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld have denied the International Committee of the Red Cross access to secret detainees. Of course they deny that there are any secret detainees. But wouldn't a deplorably f-ed up DOD accounting system create a very convenient way to funnel taxpayer $$$ to just such an operation without leaving any tell-tale traces by which to hold them accountable? Especially since it's already a known fact that the DOD created secret detainee facilities in Iraq and didn't list any of those detainees on the official reports of who was in custody and where.

Here's what I am 100% convinced of: I do not trust anyone in this administration to tell me the truth. Period. No exceptions. Maybe they're telling the truth on certain issues. But, the trust has long since been broken and I am no longer willing to accept anything they say which can't be independently verified by another source.

Posted by Kevin at May 12, 2006 09:54 AM

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