Current US Military

[brewster]

As many of the people quoted by Taibbi say, if a private enterprise were run like the Pentagon, people would be in jail and the company broke. Smitty, you're just happy being on the receiving end of this welfare on a grand scale, and saying that the footdraggers will win by grinding down the people who want answers is endorsing corruption. All the non-entitlement social programs that conservatives rail against are a tiny fraction of the waste of the MIC. But the real point is: NO ONE KNOW WHAT THEY SPEND OR WHERE IT WENT! That's just fucking nuts. They throw $700b/yr at a machine designed to make money disappear and not account for it.

[Smitty-48]

As many of the people quoted by Taibbi say, if a private enterprise were run like the Pentagon, people would be in jail and the company broke. Smitty, you're just happy being on the receiving end of this welfare on a grand scale

I'm just happy in general, I mean, I don't have much to complain about. Except winter.

If you want to waste your life waiting for the Pentagon to become like a private company, I can't help you.

Neither can Matt Taibbi.

[brewster]

As many of the people quoted by Taibbi say, if a private enterprise were run like the Pentagon, people would be in jail and the company broke. Smitty, you're just happy being on the receiving end of this welfare on a grand scale

I'm just happy in general, I mean, I don't have much to complain about. Except winter.

If you want to waste your life waiting for the Pentagon to become like a private company, I can't help you.

Neither can Matt Taibbi.

Not being an American I guess it's understandable you don't give a fuck. Your tax dollars are not vanishing into this black hole. This isn't about whether or not we need a strong military. It's about getting what we pay for, and not buying more than we asked for.

[Smitty-48]

As many of the people quoted by Taibbi say, if a private enterprise were run like the Pentagon, people would be in jail and the company broke. Smitty, you're just happy being on the receiving end of this welfare on a grand scale

I'm just happy in general, I mean, I don't have much to complain about. Except winter.

If you want to waste your life waiting for the Pentagon to become like a private company, I can't help you.

Neither can Matt Taibbi.

Not being an American I guess it's understandable you don't give a fuck. Your tax dollars are not vanishing into this black hole. This isn't about whether or not we need a strong military. It's about getting what we pay for, and not buying more than we asked for.

Keep on cryin', bitch nigga. See where that gets you. /shrugs

[StCapps]

As many of the people quoted by Taibbi say, if a private enterprise were run like the Pentagon, people would be in jail and the company broke. Smitty, you're just happy being on the receiving end of this welfare on a grand scale

I'm just happy in general, I mean, I don't have much to complain about. Except winter.

If you want to waste your life waiting for the Pentagon to become like a private company, I can't help you.

Neither can Matt Taibbi.

Not being an American I guess it's understandable you don't give a fuck. Your tax dollars are not vanishing into this black hole. This isn't about whether or not we need a strong military. It's about getting what we pay for, and not buying more than we asked for.

Trimming the fat is a good idea, but bitching about the Pentagon ain't gonna get you anywhere. There will always be wasted money, comes with the territory, even if they did great job of not wasting it compared to most.

[Smitty-48]

I'm just happy in general, I mean, I don't have much to complain about. Except winter.

If you want to waste your life waiting for the Pentagon to become like a private company, I can't help you.

Neither can Matt Taibbi.

Not being an American I guess it's understandable you don't give a fuck. Your tax dollars are not vanishing into this black hole. This isn't about whether or not we need a strong military. It's about getting what we pay for, and not buying more than we asked for.

Trimming the fat is a good idea, but bitching about the Pentagon ain't gonna get you anywhere. There will always be wasted money, comes with the territory, even if they did great job of not wasting it compared to most.

Wasted eleven trillion constant dollars on the Cold War.

Dien Bien Phu was a not a Domino, who knew?

Manifest Destiny is destiny.

[StCapps]

They call the MICC cumulonimbus because you know it makes it rain.

[Smitty-48]

They call the MICC cumulonimbus because you know it makes it rain.

Matt Taibbi will not come between the people and their pork in the districts.

If necessary, JSOC can hack his car and drive it off the road, just like they did to Hastings.

[C-Mag]

They could give a 80-90% accounting that would be a good start if they wanted to.

The Pentagon knows better than they want to admit where the money goes, it just doesn't look good, so they are playing stupid on everything. I know, because I've been briefed by a division level civilian financial officer on what funds were available, and they track that shit close. They will tell you what every Soldier is authorized for funding for training, travel, gear, etc.

Now what happens is those funds are set aside for Joe at the division level and doled out down the line. Most those funds are sucked up at division/brigade, or battalion level before it gets to Company level. So these various HQs are using the funds in various ways to do shit they want to do. Travel pay is a classic boondoggle. All the battalion level staff get travel pay to go to bullshit conference or staff rides, shit like that, or just to further their personal career.

Then you get into property loss shit. If you're the average Joe and you lose something they'll try to make you pay for it, but if you are staff, it gets written off. Shit happens all the time. Something new since GWOT is overstaffing. Where you have multiple field grade officers slotted and being paid to do the same job. Check out Military Corruption.com. You see a pattern. Anytime they charge a staff officer or NCO, you'll see charges as well for misuse of government property or funds. Because all those fuckers are doing it.

What's happened is Washington level corruption has seeped through our government institutions down to the local level. In all agencies. So there are a lot of games being played with government funds.

The big problem with all of this is that Joe is not getting what he needs to make him effective in combat.

[Speaker to Animals]

It would be very hard to accurately account for the entire DoD. Almost not really worth the cost of doing it.

Better to let each level audit itself, with heavy emphasis on oversight of the top Pentagon level and appropriations. At the unit level, don't worry so much about the little things.

One thing I noticed in my stint was how leadership always obsessed over endless small shit as if any of that matters, while ignoring the very big problems because they seemed so intractable and fixed. You could save a little bit of money focusing on where we buy our bolts and screws. You can save a lot of money rethinking how we organize maintenance itself. And then you could audit the fuck out of a wing and its squadrons, finding all kinds of little faults to correct, like buying more expensive screws and toilet paper, but you will never catch on to the bigger issues of how the organizational structure and ops scheduling costs us orders of magnitude more.

People should stop pretending like "audits" are the cure to budget waste. They really are not. Audits are a gold mine for spineless yes-men who can use the easy small savings they "discovered" as bullet points for advancement.