The 5th Labor

BRT has talked quite often about the MICC aka the Military/Industrial/Congressional/ Complex, the sacred cow that keeps on taking without allowing for a meaningful audit to be conducted to see if the hundreds of billions of dollars garnered per year are well spent, something people are beginning to demand, especially in light of the fact it seems the US Army has lost track of a cool $6.5 Trillion, an astounding figure to say the least. Click here to get the IG Defense Report on the Army's fubar.

By congressional mandate, the Pentagon needs to be ready for an audit of its finances by Sept. 30, 2017. If what’s going on at the U.S. Army is any indication — and it is — then next fall’s audit will be a shit-show of broken promises, cooked books and bizarre accounting.

The Army made headlines in mid-August 2016 when a Defense Department Inspector General report landed with a heavy thud. The 75-page report detailed all the ways the Army screwed up its accounting of the Army General Fund in 2015.

According to the report, Army bookkeepers screwed up the budget to the tune of … $6.5 trillion dollars.

Yes, trillion.

That’s $6.5 trillion in accounting mistakes for the year 2015 alone. That’s such a huge number that it doesn’t even make a lot of sense. The annual budget for the entire U.S. military in the past few years has been around half-a-trillion bucks.

How could the Army misplace, fudge, misappropriate or otherwise lose $6.5 trillion? It’s simple. Years of no oversight, bad accounting practices and crappy computer systems created this problem. And remember, this is just the Army and just its general fund.

This $6.5-trillion error is just the tip of the financial iceberg. It’s also business as usual for a military that’s consistently proved its both unwilling and fundamentally unable to maintain even the appearance of fiscal responsibility.

The 5th labor looms. 

The 12 Labors of Hercules, the 5th is the cleaning of the Augean Stables.

The 1st Labor, The Nemean Lion