Reply #21: yeah ...right.. [View All]

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Foreign_Policy/US_ForeignPolicy.html
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Military_Budget/Cost_Iraq_Afghan_Wars.html
the Congressional Research Service ,
the Congressional Budget Office
the Government Accountability Office
CBO stated in its testimony to the National Security Subcommittee:
CBO frequently has difficulty obtaining monthly reports on war obligations and other data. Often the agency receives that information months after the data are officially approved for release."
CBO also stated "DOD's supplemental budget requests and the monthly obligation reports issued by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) often do not provide enough detail to determine how ... funds for operations in Iraq and the war on terrorism have been obligated."

GAO's testimony was more pointed: "GAO's prior work found numerous problems with DOD's processes for recording and reporting GWOT costs, including long-standing deficiencies in DOD's financial management systems and business processes, the use of estimates instead of actual cost data, and the lack of adequate supporting documentation."
For example, GAO found $1.8 billion in expenses that were double counted in 2004 and 2005; and some costs to be "materially overstated" by as much a $2.1 billion in 2004.
GAO concluded: "As a result, neither DOD nor the Congress reliably know how much the war is costing and how appropriated funds are being used or have historical data useful in considering future funding needs."

CRS' testimony was the most revealing of all. It asserted that reporting on the costs of the wars requires the "use of estimates to fill gaps and resolve discrepancies and uncertainties" encountered in DOD's data.
The terms "gaps" and "discrepancies" are perhaps a bit too polite for some of the problems CRS found, including:
* In fiscal years 2001 to 2002, DOD "obligated" $1.2 billion more than the budget authority appropriated by Congress for the wars - a potential violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act.
* The funding sources for $2.5 billion spent in 2002, "presumably for initial troop deployments" for the Iraq war, were "unclear."
* $7 billion that was appropriated in 2003 to DOD for the war has apparently not been spent, but in any case DOD's records on what happened to the money do not exist.
* Yet again, in 2004, DOD obligated $2 billion more than the appropriations available to it from Congress - another potential Anti-Deficiency Act violation.
Most of the above data pertain to "obligations," not the money actually spent (outlays). The outlays for the war are impossible to track; DOD mixes those records with outlays for non-war costs, making it impossible to determine if the money was spent as DOD, or Congress, intended.
CRS also reported that it is not just DOD's cost estimates that are problematic. DOD apparently cannot agree with itself on the question of how many military personnel are deployed for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

DOD, and the press, typically report on the numbers of U.S. military personnel deployed inside Iraq and Afghanistan, not including the numbers deployed to surrounding countries to support the in-country personnel.
Different DOD reports give different figures for the total numbers in and around both countries:
DOD's Contingency Tracking System counted 260,000 deployed in and around Iraq (as opposed to numbers varying from 140,000 to 160,000 for those inside Iraq) and 60,000 deployed in and around Afghanistan (as opposed to 18,000 to 20,000 reported in Afghanistan).*
o DOD's report "Active Duty Military Personnel by Regional Area and by Country" listed 207,000 deployed altogether for Iraq and 20,000 for Afghanistan.
* DFAS cost data supports 202,000 deployed for Iraq and 50,000 deployed for Afghanistan.
In short, nobody in the executive branch or Congress can reliably say what the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost, nor the exact number of troops deployed for them. Various entities have different estimates that vary by tens of billions of dollars and thousands of people; they cannot even agree on the dollars publicly appropriated by Congress. Also, there is no reliable record for how the Pentagon planned to spend the money appropriated to it by Congress, and there is no record whatsoever for how it was actually spent.

The Coming Wars
What the Pentagon can now do in secret
by Seymour Hersh
New Yorker magazine (ZNet, 1/19/05)

Rumsfeld will become even more important during the second term. In interviews with past and present intelligence and military officials, I was told that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld's responsibility. The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon's control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.
The President's decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off the books--free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) "The Pentagon doesn't feel obligated to report any of this to Congress," the former high-level intelligence official said. "They don't even call it 'covert ops'--it's too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it's 'black reconnaissance.' They're not even going to tell the cincs"--the regional American military commanders-in-chief. (The Defense Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There was other evidence of Pentagon encroachment. Two former C.I.A. clandestine officers, Vince Cannistraro and Philip Giraldi, who publish Intelligence Brief, a newsletter for their business clients, reported last month on the existence of a broad counter-terrorism Presidential finding that permitted the Pentagon "to operate unilaterally in a number of countries where there is a perception of a clear and evident terrorist threat. . . . A number of the countries are friendly to the U.S. and are major trading partners. Most have been cooperating in the war on terrorism." The two former officers listed some of the countries--Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, and Malaysia. (I was subsequently told by the former high-level intelligence official that Tunisia is also on the list.)
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/American_Empire/ComingWars_Hersh.html