By Staff
Congress has approved $320 billion in military spending in the last three years since the United States invaded Iraq.
That's on top of the regular Department of Defense budget.
The Defense budget itself has jumped some 40 percent since 2001.
Pentagon officials are trooping to Capitol Hill to defend this year's $70 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's past time we examined where all this dough goes.
As Sen. Jack Reed, D-Del., knows from sitting on the Armed Services Committee, “Oversight was lax.”
That's an understatement.
Defense's inspector general, accused by some of being slow to investigate war spending, is just now opening a Middle East office.
So we welcome Follow the Money, a watchdog project sponsored by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
In addition to that credible credential, leading the monitoring is Dina Rasor, who helped uncover Pentagon procurement scandals in the 1980s.
If truth is the first casualty of war, normal oversight systems must be the second.
What does that mean?
One soldier told Follow the Money that his unit could (still!) not get enough armor, but it received a $15,000, 60-inch plasma television on which to view the daily briefing.
But dust ruined it.
Just like nine others they got to replace the first one!
Though it sounds like we're just throwing money around willy-nilly, the Marines' new special-ops unit wanted $65 million for necessary equipment such as nightscopes and computer-mapping systems and was turned down.
The Marine Corps is said to be still flying around Iraq in helicopters from the Vietnam era.
Meanwhile, $1 billion was lopped from the program for the choppers' only replacement aircraft, the V-22 Osprey.
Go figure. The Army didn't have any qualms about reimbursing a Halliburton subsidiary for almost $2.41 billion for work done in Iraq under a no-bid contract.
Even though a Pentagon audit found $263 million in questionable charges.
The Army will pay all but $10.1 million of the contested costs because, Rhonda James, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokeswoman, told The Associated Press, “The contractor is not required to perform perfectly to be entitled to reimbursement.”
Follow the money, indeed.