“The Pentagon announced on June 21, 2023 that it had overestimated the value of arms sent to Ukraine over the past two years by $6.2 billion. Now, the discovery of additional errors brings the total unspent sum to $8.2 billion.”
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"U.S. Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) allows the president to allocate equipment from U.S. stocks, such as ammunition, vehicles, and medical supplies, to respond to crises abroad. PDA arises from the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.
The Pentagon’s “efforts to properly value defense articles for drawdown are hampered because the Foreign Assistance Act does not clearly define certain terms and DOD lacks PDA-specific valuation guidance,” according to the GAO.
Due to the errors, the Defense Department can send a further $2 billion in weapons to Ukraine to cover the amount already approved by U.S. President Joe Biden."
Bonus Reddit comment: “NOOO!! This isn’t corruption or affecting your taxes!! We just overestimated by a couple billion/accidentally cooked the books and determined we can send more!”
8.9k upvotes. If there was ever a comment that convinced me Reddit is astroturfed / an op, this is it. Because they are objectively wrong. Or at least intentionally misleading.
They’re focusing on the fact that the valuation equipment changed and ignoring what that actually means. Sure, by itself it doesn’t affect US taxpayers. But the point is, the military says they overvalued it by $2, so that allows them to send $2 billion more worth of equipment. That’s additional stocks of weapons that ostensibly have to be replaced, which is paid for by tax dollars.
And while it’s not provably corrupt, it strains credulity to think this was not done in order to ship more weapons. Revaluations of this kind are much much more likely because someone wants it revalued, i.e. corruption.
No, no, it’s the US government. We don’t use terms like corruption here…fulfilling lobby quotas is a better term…
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yea and they froze Russian foreign reserves (which are in U.S. Treasuries or EU bonds), pretended that it was being used to ‘fund’ ‘aid’ to Ukraine by using it as collateral for a ‘loan’ from the IMF/World Bank. How did IMF/World Bank acquire the Dollars, I wonder who gave it to them.
How can someone say that the Pentagon is doing “back of the envelope math” for billions of dollars of military ordinance and not get called out for
COMPLETE GIBBERING INSANITY
88 name
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It’s actually my birth year and I hate that Nazis have claimed it for themselves.
They ruined so much stuff with their fetid touch. Runes look cool, the swastika is cool, having a skull emblem is cool. Fuckin fascist nerds.
had a rune shirt once. first time out wearing it, this guy i had titled Toy Nazi immediately compliments it upon walking in. threw the fucking thing out after. the shirt, not the guy. tho, yeah, in retrospect, i’m not a v clever gal.
libs will write this then turn around and write an even longer post about how the war “costs us nothing” because the US is sending old stock that was slated to be destroyed anyway, or because all the weapon manufacturing money stays in the US, or whatever the cope of the day is
I think all the people working at the weapons factories could be put into better use like building high speed rail.
The liberals argue the MIC is a good way to stimulate the economy when in reality American military spending mostly ends up in financial markets not being used for anything productive. A small bit of it maybe ends up in the hands of people working in the factories (who then spend it on goods and services etc) but that is nothing.
This is a good article on military spending
There is no “we” you stupid servile cuck, the american elite do whatever they want whether you like it or not. No room for your input.
Reddit:
“NOOOOO THIS ISNT A MISTAKE, THIS DOESNT AFFECT YOUR TAX DOLLARS!”
“I’m not owned!!! I’m not owned!!!” 🌽
In order to correctly finish the analogy here, the place you donate to would have to call back and demand another $2,000 car from you to cover the discrepancy, and you’d have to comply.
This doesn’t affect your taxes (except for $2bn more being spent on fuelling pointless war instead of healthcare).
These idiots don’t remember Rumsfeld reiterating on Sept 10, 2001 (yes) that the military had approximately 2 TRILLION in ‘accounting irregularities’
This isn’t new, and covering for the MIC in such a manner is naive at best
Don’t worry it will go “poof” once in Ukraine, both literally and figuratively