Democrats and Republicans Come Together in Support of Military Spending Binge

In a show of bipartisan support for the reproduction and expansion of the global warfare and corporate welfare state, Democrats and Republicans in the House came together yesterday and overwhelmingly agreed to tack another $59 billion onto the national debt in order to extend the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. [Oops, false, make that $37 billion. -d.] Many commentators wondered whether the most recent Wikileaks document drop would "end the war," thus demonstrating how little they understand of the Democratic-Republican party's zeal for fighting wars Americans don't support with money we don't have. Given the Pentagon's history of financial mismanagement and faulty accounting, in the end, we probably won't know what it will have paid for either. From the AFP:

The Pentagon cannot properly account for nearly nine billion dollars in Iraqi oil revenues and other funds received for reconstruction programs after the 2003 US invasion, a US audit found Tuesday.

"The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss," the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said in a report.

The Pentagon received 9.1 billion dollars in 2004 from the fund set up by the US-led occupation authority to benefit Iraqis with Iraqi oil and gas revenues and assets seized from the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein.

But the audit found the Pentagon cannot properly account for 8.7 billion dollars because defense agencies that received the money failed to set up required Treasury accounts and no single organization was created to manage the funds.

The audit found that "weaknesses" in the Department of Defense (DOD) financial and management controls meant it could not account properly for the funds.