Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
April 10, 2016
Late last
year, I spent some time digging into [4] the
Pentagon’s “reconstruction” efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, countries it
invaded in 2001 and 2003 in tandem with a chosen crew of warrior corporations [5]. As a
story of fabled American can-do in distant lands, both proved genuinely dismal
no-can-do tales, from roads built (that instantly started crumbling [6]) to police
academies constructed (that proved to be health hazards [7]) to
prisons begun (that were never finished [8]) to
schools constructed (that remained uncompleted[9]) to
small arms transfers (that were “lost” in transit [10]) to armies
built, trained, and equipped for stunning sums [11] (that collapsed [12]). It
was as if nothing the Pentagon touched turned to anything but dross (including
the never-ending wars [13] it
fought). All of it added up to what I then labeled a massive “$cam [4]” with
American taxpayer money lost in amounts that staggered the imagination.
All of that
came rushing back as I read Tom Dispatch regular [14] William
Hartung’s latest post on “waste” at the Pentagon. It didn’t just happen
in Kabul and Baghdad; it’s been going on right here in the good old USA for, as
Hartung recounts, the last five decades. There’s only one difference I
can see: in Kabul, Baghdad, or any other capital in the Greater Middle East and
Africa, if we saw far smaller versions of such “waste” indulged in by the
elites of those countries, we would call it “corruption [15]” without
blinking. So here’s my little suggestion, as you read Hartung: think
about just how deeply what once would have been considered a Third World-style
of corruption is buried in the very heart of our system and in the way of life
of the military-industrial complex. By now, President Dwight Eisenhower [16] must
be tossing and turning in his grave.-Tom Engelhardt
How Not to
Audit the Pentagon
Five Decades Later, the Military Waste Machine Is Running Full Speed Ahead
Five Decades Later, the Military Waste Machine Is Running Full Speed Ahead
From spending [18] $150
million on private villas for a handful of personnel in Afghanistan to blowing [19] $2.7
billion on an air surveillance balloon that doesn’t work, the latest
revelations of waste at the Pentagon are just the most recent howlers in a long
line of similar stories stretching back at least five decades. Other
hot-off-the-presses examples would include the Army’s purchase [20] of
helicopter gears worth $500 each for $8,000 each and the accumulation [21] of
billions of dollars' worth of weapons components that will never be used. And
then there’s the one that would have to be everyone’s favorite Pentagon waste
story: the spending of $50,000 to investigate [22] the
bomb-detecting capabilities of African elephants. (And here’s a shock: they
didn’t turn out to be that great!) The elephant research, of course, represents
chump change in the Pentagon’s wastage sweepstakes and in the context of its
$600-billion-plus budget, but think of it as indicative of the absurd lengths
the Department of Defense will go to when what’s at stake is throwing away
taxpayer dollars.
Keep in
mind that the above examples are just the tip of the tip of a titanic iceberg
of military waste. In a recent report I did for the Center for
International Policy, I identified [23] 27
recent examples of such wasteful spending totaling over $33 billion. And
that was no more than a sampling of everyday life in the twenty-first-century
world of the Pentagon.
The
staggering persistence and profusion of such cases suggests that it’s time to
rethink what exactly they represent. Far from being aberrations in need
of correction to make the Pentagon run more efficiently, wasting vast sums of
taxpayer dollars should be seen as a way of life for the Department of
Defense. And with that in mind, let’s take a little tour through the
highlights of Pentagon waste from the 1960s to the present.
The first
person to bring widespread public attention to the size and scope of the
problem of Pentagon waste was Ernest Fitzgerald, an Air Force deputy for
management systems. In the late 1960s, he battled that service to bring
to light massive cost overruns on Lockheed’s C-5A transport plane. He
risked his job, and was ultimately fired [24], for uncovering [25] $2
billion in excess expenditures on a plane that was supposed to make the rapid
deployment of large quantities of military equipment to Vietnam and other
distant conflicts a reality.
The cost
increase on the C-5A was twice the price Lockheed had initially promised, and
at the time one of the largest cost overruns ever exposed. It was also an
episode of special interest then, because Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
had been pledging to bring the efficient business methods he had learned [26] as
Ford Motors’ president to bear on the Pentagon’s budgeting process.
No such
luck, as it turned out, but Fitzgerald’s revelations did, at least, spark a
decade of media and congressional scrutiny of the business practices of the
weapons industry. The C-5A fiasco [27], combined
with Lockheed’s financial troubles with its L-1011 airliner project, led the
company to approach Congress, hat in hand, for a $250 million government bailout [28].
Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire, who had helped bring attention to the C-5A
overruns, vigorously opposed [29] the
measure, and came within one vote of defeating it in the Senate.
In a
time-tested lobbying technique that has been used by weapons makers ever since,
Lockheed claimed [30] that
denying it loan guarantees would cost 34,000 jobs in 35 states, while
undermining the Pentagon’s ability to prepare for the next war, whatever it
might be. The tactic worked like a charm. Montana Senator Lee
Metcalf, who cast the deciding vote in favor of the bailout, said [31], “I’m not
going to be the one to put those thousands of people out of work.” An
analysis by the New York Times found that every senator with a Lockheed-related
plant in his or her state voted for the deal.
By
rewarding Lockheed Martin for its wasteful practices, Congress set a precedent
that has never been superseded. A present-day case in point is -- speak
of the devil -- Lockheed Martin’s F-35 combat aircraft. At $1.4 trillion [32] in
procurement and operating costs over its lifetime, it will be the most
expensive weapons program ever undertaken by the Pentagon (or anyone else on
Planet Earth), and the warning signs are already in: tens of billions of
dollars in projected cost overruns and myriad performance problems before the
F-35 is even out of its testing phase. Now the Pentagon wants to rush the
plane into production by making a “block buy [33]” of more
than 400 planes that will involve little or no accountability [34] regarding
the quality and cost of the final product.
Predictably,
almost five decades after the C-5A contretemps, Lockheed Martin has deployed an
inflationary version of the jobs argument in defense of the F-35, making the
wildly exaggerated claim [35] that
the plane will produce 125,000 jobs in 46 states. The company has even
created a handy interactive map [36] to show how many jobs
the program will allegedly create state by state. Never mind the fact
that weapons spending is the least efficient way to create jobs [37], lagging
far behind investment in housing, education, or infrastructure.
The Classic
$640 Toilet Seat
Despite the
tens of billions being wasted on a project like the F-35, the examples that
tend to draw the most attention from the media and the most outrage among
taxpayers involve overspending on routine items. This may be because the
average person doesn’t have a sense of what a fighter plane should cost, but
can more easily grasp that spending [38] $640
for a toilet seat or $7,600 for a coffee pot is outrageous. These kinds
of examples -- first exposed through work done in the 1980s by Dina Rasor [39] of
the Project on Military Procurement -- undermined the position taken by
President Ronald Reagan’s administration that not a penny could be cut from its
then-record peacetime Pentagon budgets.
The media
ate such stories up. Pentagon overpayments for everyday items generated [38] hundreds
of articles in newspapers and magazines, including front-page coverage in the
Washington Post. Two whistleblowers were even interviewed on the Today
Show, and Johnny Carson joked about such scandals in his introductory
monologues on the Tonight Show. Perhaps the most memorable depiction of
the problem was a cartoon [40] by
the Washington Post’s Herblock that showed Reagan Secretary of Defense Caspar
Weinberger wearing a $640 toilet seat around his neck. This outburst of
truth-telling, whistleblowing, investigative journalism, and mockery helped put
a cap on the Reagan military buildup, but -- you won’t be surprised to learn --
didn’t keep the Pentagon from finding ever more innovative ways to misspend tax
dollars.
The most
outrageous spending choice of the 1990s was undoubtedly the Clinton
administration’s decision to subsidize the mergers [41] of
major defense firms. As Lockheed (yet again!) and Martin Marietta merged,
Northrop teamed with Grumman, and Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas, the Pentagon
provided funding to pay for everything from closing down factories to
subsidizing golden parachutes for displaced executives and board members.
At the time, Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders aptly dubbed the process “payoffs for layoffs [42],” as
executives of defense firms received healthy payouts while laid-off workers
were largely left to fend for themselves.
The
Pentagon’s rationale for giving hundreds of millions of dollars to these
emerging defense behemoths was laughable. The claim -- absurd on the face of it
-- was that the new, larger companies would provide the Pentagon with lower
prices once they had eliminated unnecessary overhead. Former Pentagon official
Lawrence Korb, who opposed the subsidies at the time, noted [43] the
obvious: there was no evidence that weapons programs grew any cheaper, cost overruns
any less, or wastage any smaller thanks to government subsidized mergers. As in
fact became clear in the world of the weapons giants that followed, the
increased bargaining power of companies like Lockheed Martin in a significantly
less competitive market undoubtedly resulted in higher weapons costs.
It Took $6
Billion Not to Audit the Pentagon
The poster
child for waste in the first decade of the twenty-first century was certainly
the billions of dollars a privatizing Pentagon handed out to up-armored
companies like Halliburton [44] that
accompanied the U.S. military into its war zones and engaged in Pentagon-funded
base-building and “reconstruction” (aka “nation building”) projects in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR [45]) alone
seems to come out with new examples of waste, fraud, and abuse on practically a
weekly basis. Among Afghan projects that stood out over the years was a
multimillion-dollar “highway to nowhere [6],” a $43 million gas station [46] in
nowhere, a $25 million [47] “state
of the art” headquarters for the U.S. military in Helmand Province, with all
the usual cost overruns, that no one ever used, and the payment of actual
salaries to countless thousands of no ones aptly labeled “ghost soldiers [48].” And
that’s just to begin enumerating a long, long list [4]. Last
year, Pro Publica created [49] an
invaluable interactive graphic detailing $17 billion in wasteful spending
uncovered by SIGAR, complete with information on what that money could have
purchased if it had been used productively.
One reason
the Pentagon has been able to get away with all this is that it has proven
strangely incapable of doing [50] a
simple audit of itself, despite a Congressionally mandated requirement dating
back to 1990 that it do so. Conveniently enough, this means that the Department
of Defense can’t tell us how much equipment it has purchased, or how often it
has been overcharged, or even how many contractors it employs. This may be
spectacularly bad bookkeeping, but it’s great for defense firms, which profit
all the more in an environment of minimal accountability. Call it irony or call
it symptomatic of a successful way of life, but a recent analysis by the
Project on Government Oversight notes [51] that
the Pentagon has so far spent roughly $6 billion on “fixing” the audit problem
-- with no solution in sight.
If
anything, in recent years the Pentagon’s accounting practices have been getting
worse. Among the many offenses to any reasonable accounting sensibility,
perhaps the most striking has been the way the war budget -- known in Pentagonese
as the Overseas Contingency Operations account -- has been used as a slush fund [52] to
pay for tens of billions of dollars of items that have nothing to do with
fighting wars. This evasive maneuver has been used to get around the caps that
were placed on the Pentagon’s regular budget by Congress in the Budget Control
Act of 2011.
If the
Pentagon has its way, nuclear weapons will get their very own slush fund as
well. For years, the submarine lobby floated the idea of a separate Sea-Based Deterrence Fund [53] (outside
of the Navy’s regular shipbuilding budget) to pay for ballistic missile-firing
submarines. Congress has signed off on this idea, and now there are calls [54] for a
nuclear deterrent fund that would give special budgetary treatment to bombers and
intercontinental ballistic missiles as well. If implemented, this change would
throw the minimalist budget discipline that now exists at the Pentagon
decisively out the nearest window and increase pressures to raise the
department’s overall budget, which already exceeds [55] the
levels reached during the Reagan buildup.
Why has
waste at the Pentagon been so hard to rein in? The answer is, in a sense,
not complicated: the military-industrial complex profits from waste.
Closer scrutiny of waste could mean not just cheaper spare parts, but serious
questions about whether cash cows like the F-35 are needed at all. An
accurate head count of the hundreds of thousands of private contractors
employed by the Pentagon would reveal that a large proportion of them are doing
work that is either duplicative or unnecessary. In other words, an effective
audit of the Pentagon or any form of serious oversight of its wasteful way of
life would pose a financial threat to a sector that is doing just fine under
current arrangements.
Who knows?
If the Department of Defense’s wasteful ways were ever brought under genuine
scrutiny and control, people might start to question, for example, whether a
country that already has the capability to destroy the world many times over
needs to spend [56]$1 trillion
over the next three decades on a new generation of ballistic missiles, bombers,
and nuclear-armed submarines. None of this would be good news for the
contractors or for their allies in the Pentagon and Congress.
Undoubtedly,
from time to time, you’ll continue to hear outrageous media stories about waste
at the Pentagon and bomb-detecting elephants gone astray. Without a concerted
campaign of public pressure of a sort we haven’t seen in recent years, however,
the Pentagon’s runaway budget will never be reined in, that audit will never
happen, and the weapons makers will whistle a happy tune on their way to the
bank with our cash.
To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to
receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here [57].
William D.
Hartung, a TomDispatch regular [14], is the
director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International
Policy. He is the author, among other books, of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and
the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex [58].
[60]
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/world/amount-our-taxpayer-money-military-pisses-away-just-unbelievable
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/william-d-hartung
[2] http://www.tomdispatch.com/
[3] http://www.tomdispatch.com
[4] http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176068/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_roads_to_nowhere,_ghost_soldiers,_and_a_$43_million_gas_station_in_afghanistan/
[5] http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175507/tom_engelhardt_the_arrival_of_the_warrior_corporation
[6] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/afghanistans-multimillion-highway-to-nowhere-7922542.html
[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092702134.html
[8] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/empty-iraq-prison-a-monument-to-waste/
[9] http://www.ryot.org/u-s-reconstruction-effort-in-afghan-provinces-an-unfinished-work/125558
[10] https://news.vice.com/article/the-us-might-have-lost-a-heap-of-weapons-in-afghanistan
[11] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-is-american-money-being-spent-on-afghan-security-forces-its-classified/
[12] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176055/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich,_vietnamization_2.0/
[13] http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176000/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_tomorrow%27s_news_today/
[14] http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175973/
[15] http://www.transparency.org/cpi2015
[16] http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/%7Ehst306/documents/indust.html
[17] http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/williamhartung
[18] http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/12/03/Pentagon-Posh-US-Spent-150-Million-Luxury-Villas-Afghanistan
[19] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/10/28/the-army-lost-control-of-a-giant-unmanned-surveillance-blimp/
[20] http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/07/10/Pentagon-Paid-Over-8000-Helicopter-Part-Should-Cost-Less-500
[21] http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/pentagon-investigation-billions-broken-by-design-216935
[22] http://thehill.com/policy/defense/budget-appropriations/237044-mccain-vows-to-fight-sequestration-wasteful-defense
[23] https://www.ciponline.org/research/entry/dont-get-fooled-again-pentagon-waste-and-congressional-oversight
[24] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/03/07/tapes-show-nixon-role-in-firing-of-ernest-fitzgerald/048cd88e-60e5-498d-a8e2-e3b39461356b/
[25] http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/1066:weapons-that-will-never-die-we-need-to-stop-the-expensive-reincarnations-part-ii
[26] http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/robert-mcnamara-becomes-president-of-ford-motor-company
[27] http://www.amazon.com/The-C-5A-Scandal-Military-Industrial-Complex/dp/0395121035
[28] http://www.bloomberg.com/ss/07/12/1217_bailouts/source/22.htm
[29] https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2209&dat=19710513&id=apkrAAAAIBAJ&sjid=GfgFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4938,1711099&hl=en
[30] https://www.ciponline.org/research/html/promising-the-sky-pork-barrel-politics-and-the-f-35-combat-aircraft
[31] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/l-1011-history.htm
[32] http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/384088/the-pentagons-15-trillion-mistake/
[33] http://aviationweek.com/paris-air-show-2015/lockheed-pentagon-revive-f-35-block-buy-proposal
[34] http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/weapons/2016/pentagon-tester-warns-against-f-35.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/
[35] http://www.ciponline.org/research/entry/promising-the-sky-pork-barrel-politics-and-the-f-35-combat-aircraft
[36] https://www.f35.com/about/economic-impact-map
[37] http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/published_study/PERI_military_spending_2011.pdf
[38] http://articles.latimes.com/1986-07-30/news/vw-18804_1_nut
[39] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dina-rasor/
[40] https://books.google.com/books?id=6qk01F-uUpAC&pg=PA217&lpg=PA217&dq=Herblock+Weinberger+toilet+seat&source=bl&ots=C8M4i3iIcn&sig=7TOtC4LmYFWIEpW5i_esbA8JG7c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjd0OXr5OvLAhUpnoMKHQBWDk8Q6AEISDAJ#v=onepage&q=Herblock%20Weinberger%20toilet%20seat&f=false
[41] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/if-you-want-fix-defense-contracting-mergers-arent-the-14193
[42] http://articles.latimes.com/1996-07-11/local/me-23009_1_defense-contractors
[43] http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/1996/06/summer-defenseindustry-korb
[44] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/contractor-waste-iraq-KBR
[45] https://www.sigar.mil/
[46] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/11/02/how-the-pentagon-spent-43-million-on-a-single-gas-station/
[47] https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/boondoggle
[48] http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/u.s.-official-warns-of-afghan-ghost-soldiers/article/2566164
[49] https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/afghan
[50] http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/11/30/Why-Can-t-Pentagon-Audit-Its-Books-Excuses-Pile
[51] http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/defense-budget/2016/will-the-pentagon-ever-be.html
[52] http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-02-12/inside-the-pentagons-slush-fund-the-secret-budget-that-just-wont-go-away
[53] http://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/2015/12/09/sink-the-navys-sea-based-deterrence-fund
[54] http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/budget/2016/03/18/carter-open-department-wide-nuclear-weapons-fund/81972126/
[55] http://www.thirdway.org/report/the-presidents-2016-defense-budget
[56] http://www.nonproliferation.org/us-trillion-dollar-nuclear-triad/
[57] http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=1e41682ade
[58] http://www.amazon.com/dp/1568586973/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
[59] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on The Amount of Our Taxpayer Money the Military Pisses Away Is Just Unbelievable
[60] http://www.alternet.org/
[61] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
[2] http://www.tomdispatch.com/
[3] http://www.tomdispatch.com
[4] http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176068/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_roads_to_nowhere,_ghost_soldiers,_and_a_$43_million_gas_station_in_afghanistan/
[5] http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175507/tom_engelhardt_the_arrival_of_the_warrior_corporation
[6] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/afghanistans-multimillion-highway-to-nowhere-7922542.html
[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092702134.html
[8] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/empty-iraq-prison-a-monument-to-waste/
[9] http://www.ryot.org/u-s-reconstruction-effort-in-afghan-provinces-an-unfinished-work/125558
[10] https://news.vice.com/article/the-us-might-have-lost-a-heap-of-weapons-in-afghanistan
[11] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-is-american-money-being-spent-on-afghan-security-forces-its-classified/
[12] http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176055/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich,_vietnamization_2.0/
[13] http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176000/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_tomorrow%27s_news_today/
[14] http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175973/
[15] http://www.transparency.org/cpi2015
[16] http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/%7Ehst306/documents/indust.html
[17] http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/williamhartung
[18] http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/12/03/Pentagon-Posh-US-Spent-150-Million-Luxury-Villas-Afghanistan
[19] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/10/28/the-army-lost-control-of-a-giant-unmanned-surveillance-blimp/
[20] http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/07/10/Pentagon-Paid-Over-8000-Helicopter-Part-Should-Cost-Less-500
[21] http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/pentagon-investigation-billions-broken-by-design-216935
[22] http://thehill.com/policy/defense/budget-appropriations/237044-mccain-vows-to-fight-sequestration-wasteful-defense
[23] https://www.ciponline.org/research/entry/dont-get-fooled-again-pentagon-waste-and-congressional-oversight
[24] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/03/07/tapes-show-nixon-role-in-firing-of-ernest-fitzgerald/048cd88e-60e5-498d-a8e2-e3b39461356b/
[25] http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/1066:weapons-that-will-never-die-we-need-to-stop-the-expensive-reincarnations-part-ii
[26] http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/robert-mcnamara-becomes-president-of-ford-motor-company
[27] http://www.amazon.com/The-C-5A-Scandal-Military-Industrial-Complex/dp/0395121035
[28] http://www.bloomberg.com/ss/07/12/1217_bailouts/source/22.htm
[29] https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2209&dat=19710513&id=apkrAAAAIBAJ&sjid=GfgFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4938,1711099&hl=en
[30] https://www.ciponline.org/research/html/promising-the-sky-pork-barrel-politics-and-the-f-35-combat-aircraft
[31] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/l-1011-history.htm
[32] http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/384088/the-pentagons-15-trillion-mistake/
[33] http://aviationweek.com/paris-air-show-2015/lockheed-pentagon-revive-f-35-block-buy-proposal
[34] http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/weapons/2016/pentagon-tester-warns-against-f-35.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/
[35] http://www.ciponline.org/research/entry/promising-the-sky-pork-barrel-politics-and-the-f-35-combat-aircraft
[36] https://www.f35.com/about/economic-impact-map
[37] http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/published_study/PERI_military_spending_2011.pdf
[38] http://articles.latimes.com/1986-07-30/news/vw-18804_1_nut
[39] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dina-rasor/
[40] https://books.google.com/books?id=6qk01F-uUpAC&pg=PA217&lpg=PA217&dq=Herblock+Weinberger+toilet+seat&source=bl&ots=C8M4i3iIcn&sig=7TOtC4LmYFWIEpW5i_esbA8JG7c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjd0OXr5OvLAhUpnoMKHQBWDk8Q6AEISDAJ#v=onepage&q=Herblock%20Weinberger%20toilet%20seat&f=false
[41] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/if-you-want-fix-defense-contracting-mergers-arent-the-14193
[42] http://articles.latimes.com/1996-07-11/local/me-23009_1_defense-contractors
[43] http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/1996/06/summer-defenseindustry-korb
[44] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/contractor-waste-iraq-KBR
[45] https://www.sigar.mil/
[46] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/11/02/how-the-pentagon-spent-43-million-on-a-single-gas-station/
[47] https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/boondoggle
[48] http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/u.s.-official-warns-of-afghan-ghost-soldiers/article/2566164
[49] https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/afghan
[50] http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/11/30/Why-Can-t-Pentagon-Audit-Its-Books-Excuses-Pile
[51] http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/defense-budget/2016/will-the-pentagon-ever-be.html
[52] http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-02-12/inside-the-pentagons-slush-fund-the-secret-budget-that-just-wont-go-away
[53] http://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/2015/12/09/sink-the-navys-sea-based-deterrence-fund
[54] http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/budget/2016/03/18/carter-open-department-wide-nuclear-weapons-fund/81972126/
[55] http://www.thirdway.org/report/the-presidents-2016-defense-budget
[56] http://www.nonproliferation.org/us-trillion-dollar-nuclear-triad/
[57] http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=1e41682ade
[58] http://www.amazon.com/dp/1568586973/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
[59] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on The Amount of Our Taxpayer Money the Military Pisses Away Is Just Unbelievable
[60] http://www.alternet.org/
[61] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
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