KW: Still amazing that Donald Rumsfeld’s statement the day before 9/11 is still unanswered
February 10, 2017
- The meticulous bookkeeping habits of ISIS jihadis…
- … and the Pentagon’s nigh-criminal neglect of taxpayer funds
- The part about his “phenomenal” tax plan that Trump left out
Say this much for ISIS: They do a hell of a lot better job tracking expenses than the Pentagon.
From The Associated Press: “Receipts from taxi rides, ledgers listing internet usage for the privileged few and random logbooks documenting an ever tighter economy are just some of the documents that ISIS militants left behind when they fled eastern Mosul in the face of advancing Iraqi forces.”
Iraqi troops found the records a few days ago in an abandoned house that was used as an ISIS base. “Slips of paper,” the story goes on, “document taxi rides back and forth to ISIS-held towns across the Iraq-Syria border… Stacks of papers also testify that the group kept close tabs of utilities such as electricity and internet usage. Monthly cards bearing users’ internet names and passwords were filed with the base’s expenses.”
ISIS fighters don’t fool around with their expense account…
If you’re a longtime reader with a good memory, none of that is a surprise.
After all, ISIS had its origins as al-Qaida’s Iraqi franchise before its leaders had a falling-out with the parent organization. In late 2013, we learned about the meticulous bookkeeping practices of al-Qaeda’s African wing. “For the smallest thing, they wanted a receipt,” said a storekeeper in Mali.
“The often tiny amounts are carefully written out in pencil and colored pen on scraps of paper and Post-it notes,” said an AP story at the time: “The equivalent of $1.80 for a bar of soap; $8 for a packet of macaroni; $14 for a tube of super glue.”
Terrorism experts say it was a habit instilled by Osama bin Laden himself — going back to the time he ran his father’s construction company with more than 500 employees. Every one of them was expected to turn in forms in triplicate — for everything, no matter how small.
Contrast the jihadis’ penchant for tracking the most minute expenses… and the Pentagon’s penchant for profligacy.
In 1990, Congress passed a law requiring an annual audit of all federal agencies. The Defense Department was under orders to be audit-ready by 1996. Two decades later, it’s still not.
As of 2013, Pentagon bookkeepers groaned under the weight of no fewer than 2,100 antiquated and error-prone record-keeping systems, most of them incapable of interacting with each other.
On the day before the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, “According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.”
By year-end 2013, that number had swelled to $8.5 trillion, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Finance and Accounting Service. That’s going back to the original 1996 deadline.
We don’t have a more recent figure… but a mid-2016 report found a $6.5 trillion black hole just in the Army.
In 2009, Congress “got tough” and imposed a new cross-your-heart, hope-to-die deadline for the Pentagon to be audit-ready: Sept. 30, 2017.
But as we’ve pointed out more than once, there were no “or else” consequences attached to the deadline — no fines or jail time for anyone, not even a requirement that some undersecretary of defense read Accounting for Dummies and turn in a three-page book report to the U.S. comptroller general.
It’s not for lack of trying: Over the last eight years, new bookkeeping systems have been planned, only to be canceled later — often after $1 billion or more was spent on each.
Maybe the Pentagon should try scraps of paper and Post-it notes.
So there’s some context for our item on Tuesday about how the Trump administration is asking Congress to tack another $30 billion onto the 2017 defense budget of $598 billion.
But… but… even with that extra money, the newswires tell us the Navy and Marines face “massive readiness issues” that money can’t address right away.
Oy.
“You don’t reform a bureaucracy that wastes money by giving them more money,” writes William Astore, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who’s now a history professor. “It’s like reforming an addict on drugs by giving him more money to spend on drugs.”
But as long as the junkie can score the funds for even more hits… defense stocks will be a profitable bet.