INTEL DUMP - Really big rounding errors

Here's an eye opener from Intel Dump, Really big rounding errors:

The Washington Post reports today on a GAO report finding that the Pentagon can't count its money. Specifically, that it has 'no accurate knowledge of the cost of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or the fight against terrorism'.

Isn't that comforting? It gets worse:

Some time ago, I remember former Undersecretary of Defense Dov Zakheim testifying that DOD had a money-counting problem. He said there were something like 1,200 different accounting systems in the Pentagon; that none talked to each other; and that few measured the same things in the same way such that the figures could be related to each other. The bottom line was that at any given moment, the Pentagon could not say where billions (with a b) of taxpayer dollars were with any precision, nor could it accurately produce historical data with which to generate future budgets. In other words, everything was really just a SWAG -- a sophisticated wild assed guess.

Is this any way to run a government? No. Is this any way to run an out of control fascist state? Yes.

Once again, "War is Peace"...