[A-List] Unimpeachable source

[Keaney Michael]

US loses trillions to 'ghost army'

IAN BRUCE
The Herald, 4 February 2002

      THE US Defence Department has lost track of
      military equipment worth 10 times its £270bn
      annual budget in the past year, according to the
      General Accounting Office, the government's
      congressional watchdog.

      The £27 trillion worth of misplaced kit
      represents £5700 a head for every man, woman
      and child in America, or 100 times more than
      the UK's total defence spending on its army,
      navy, air force and strategic nuclear deterrent
      submarine force for 2001-2002.

      The revelation comes at a time when George W
      Bush, the US president, has just approved an
      additional emergency £34bn funding package
      to help the armed services tackle global
      terrorism in the midst of economic recession.

      A new "war against waste" is about to be
      launched to run parallel with the war against
      terrorism, with the GAO ordered to crack down
      on the Pentagon's careless handling of
      everything from classified guided missile parts
      to payments for part-time national guard units
      which continue to claim for "ghost" soldiers who
      have resigned or are dead.

      Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, was
      about to wield the accounting axe when
      September 11 intervened to change immediate
      priorities.

      Now he has returned to bringing to book the
      defence establishment, which has not passed a
      government audit in a decade. "This is a matter
      of life and death. The adversary's closer to
      home than Afghanistan. It's the Pentagon
      bureaucracy," he said.

      The army does not know the whereabouts of
      £640m worth of equipment and stores which left
      depots in one area and have not been logged at
      their destinations.

      A GAO source said last night: "A lot of big-ticket
      equipment is rusting quietly in railway sidings in
      Tennessee or Dakota, or has actually reached
      its intended recipient and been shunted into a
      warehouse without paperwork to track its
      movement. No-one knows it's there.

      "The national mood is understandably patriotic
      right now and no-one really wants to hear the
      harsh truth. If the Pentagon was Microsoft, it
      would be bankrupt and people in charge would
      be fired for gross incompetence."

      The latest shock has come from 40 national
      guard whistleblowers who told investigators that
      many units in the linchpin of homeland defence
      are up to 20% short of their declared
      complement of soldiers.

Full article at:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/4-2-19102-23-38-37.html

Michael Keaney
Mercuria Business School
Martinlaaksontie 36
01620 Vantaa
Finland

michael.keaney at mbs.fi