I told you about the Department of Defense’s (DoD) propensity for distributing tons of cash incentives for NOT fulfilling contracts, and you haven’t seen a peep about that in the mass media. Well, here’s another one. And these — as the former — aren’t grabbed out of thin air, rather, they come from a Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation.
In this case it’s the good ol’ Green Machine — the US Army — that has managed to “lose” $487-plus million in repaired equipment. That is to say that inventory control from only TWO inventory control points “… could not reconcile shipment records with receipt record for 42 percent of its unclassified secondary repair item shipments …”
The report states that what this means is, “The Army cannot confirm that all inventory items shipped to repair contractors were received.”
And that’s just for 2004 shipments!
Add that to the billions (no misprint) that various contractors have earned in incentives for NOT coming in at contract price and for coming in up to two years LATE on contracts, and we’re talking serious money.
Meanwhile, the guys on the ground don’t have proper body armor, don’t have properly armored light vehicles, have weaponry that doesn’t function in desert conditions, etc., etc.
What do you read about instead? The “cost” of the war on terror, wiretapping bad guys, etc., etc.
One of the main reasons I can deduce that this stuff isn’t being bugled about by the media is that the politicians whose home states depend on these contractors don’t have the cojones to make an issue of it, since SOME of that cash HAS to be going into political coffers. In turn, they don’t whisper to their pets in the press, and they in turn are too lazy to chase down real stories.
Anybody have a better reason why these things go unreported?
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