The seemingly endless Ukraine War has certainly revealed the ways in which the Pentagon can apparently launder money … and get away with it.
Just consider the completely asinine report that was just published by The Hill.
“An accounting error led the Pentagon to overvalue the military aid the United States has sent Ukraine by $6.2 billion over the past two years, double the amount first estimated …
The Defense Department (DOD) earlier this year ‘discovered inconsistencies in equipment valuation for Ukraine,’ specifically that the military services used replacement costs rather than the net book value of equipment that was taken from Pentagon stocks to send to Ukraine,” the outlet reported.
So, in other words, the Pentagon has terrible accountants … deliberately terrible, perhaps.
After all, perhaps the public may judge incompetence less harshly than corruption.
Though in the case of Biden, incompetence and corruption are a two-for-one deal.
The $6.2B admission is especially ridiculous considering the Pentagon’s antics in the spring, which also pertained to dubious accounting measures.
In March, the DOD found that it had allegedly “overestimated” valuations by $3B, though Congress was not made aware of this overestimation until multiple months later.
Predictably, Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Singh had a ready, ghostwritten explanation for the egregious errors in March.
“During our regular oversight process of presidential drawdown packages, the Department discovered inconsistencies in equipment valuation for Ukraine … In some cases, ‘replacement cost’ rather than ‘net book value’ was used, therefore overestimating the value of the equipment drawn down from U.S. stocks,” Singh chirped.
Oh, is that all? Well, thanks for clearing that up. Seems like a pretty serious accounting error for multiple billions in taxpayer revenues … and who knows what other sources of funds, these days, anyway.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers were also unimpressed by the fact that the Pentagon didn’t bother to report the issue until May.
“The revelation of a three-billion-dollar accounting error discovered two months ago and only today shared with Congress is extremely problematic, to say the least,” the representatives wrote.
No kidding. Guess the media distractions with Trump hadn’t yet revved up sufficiently for that inconvenient little truth to arise.
Of course, the Deputy Press Secretary was ever prepared, yet again, with even more disturbing remarks about the alleged $6.2B overvaluation, more than double the amount just reported in May.
“It’s just going to go back into the pot of money that we have allocated,” Singh trilled.
“Just going to go back into the pot,” huh?
Could the money laundering references be any more obvious at this point?
Especially with all the money that keeps on flowing.
In the past week, an additional $325M has been pledged to the deliberately endless war, which is another addition to the vast $113B in funding, an amount that was supposed to last until September.
More “Big Guy” shenanigans, clearly.
Speaking of which, the “Big Guy” did weigh in on Ukraine’s NATO prospects, dangling yet another opportunity for blatant bribery.
On whether Ukraine could join NATO more easily than other nations, Biden gave a rather telling reply.
“No. Because they’ve got to meet the same standards. So we’re not going to make it easy,” Biden boomed.
Yeah. One can only imagine what those (financial) “standards” will be to satisfy the “Big Guy.”
Author: Ofelia Thornton