Did We Spend Too Much? More Than a Lot?

So, how much are we spending on our various wars? Who the hell knows!

The Pentagon has no accurate knowledge of the cost of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or the fight against terrorism, limiting Congress's ability to oversee spending, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report released yesterday.

The Defense Department has reported spending $191 billion to fight terrorism from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks through May 2005, with the annual sum ballooning from $11 billion in fiscal 2002 to a projected $71 billion in fiscal 2005. But the GAO investigation found many inaccuracies totaling billions of dollars.

"Neither DOD nor Congress can reliably know how much the war is costing and details of how appropriated funds are being spent," the report to Congress stated.

Washington Post article here, GAO report here [PDF]; link via Intel-Dump.

Comments

[Sarnath]

All together now!

Kerry would've been worse.

[Government Accountant]

Asking for concrete numbers is such a reality-based notion.

How can you put a price on freedom?

What, do you hate freedom?

[Tom Crick]

Terrorists everywhere are conspiring against us, and you guys are quibbling about the budget!

...Don't you know there's a war going on?

P.S. See I can post sarcastic comments too! ...I mean, I can type the words out on my keyboard, but it makes me feel so dirty. ...Excuse me while I go wash my hands.

[Shelby]

What, the Pentagon can misplace billions of dollars, but Reason can't scare up a few hundred to fix its goddamn servers?

[Sarnath]

Is the title referencing a song? It seems familiar.

[J]

Reminded me of the U2 song "One":

Did I ask too much
More than a lot
You gave me nothing
Now that's all I got

[E. Steven]

You know, I just realized something. 9/11 was four years ago and they have yet to even begin rebuilding ground zero. And that's just one building. What are the odds, four years from now, New Orleans will look any different?

[thoreau]

So, I'm watching the Daily Show. Jon Stewart said that Bush is now officially Santa Claus: Everybody in NO gets a pony.

Rob Cordry explained that Bush is a big fan of limited government: Not limited in size, but limited in competence.

On this one regard, I agree that Kerry would be worse: With Kerry in office Stewart wouldn't have quite as much incompetence to poke fun at. Oh, there'd still be a lot of it. But not quite as much.

And before you ask, yes, I just handed in my decoder ring. Well, I pawned it, actually: The money will be donated to the server fund.

[joe]

I recall writing a handful of posts that contained phrases like "grownup," "competant," and "not drive us over a cliff" last fall.

But hey, the guy looked French, doesn't like crappy cheese on his sandwiches, and only went NEAR Cambodia when he said he went INTO Cambodia - before actually going into Cambodia later.

So, in summary, Michael Moore is fat.

Good night.

[Tom Crick]

Huh? How come no one sent me a decoder ring?

Oh and why haven't any propaganda victims jumped in and made a strawman out of joe's comment yet. Come on! What are you jerk offs losing your touch?

...just argue that Dubya wasn't responsible for the rise of Pol Pot, no matter what joe said.

...or maybe one of the more intelligent among you could charge that joe's argument about red state Middle America being just as fat as Michael Moore amounts to a tu quoque.

...and that's just off the top of my head!

[thoreau]

joe-

It's not just a matter of Kerry looking French. Even worse, he actually speaks French! He speaks it!

And whereas Kerry owns a big fancy house, Bush owns a ranch. So he's obviously just a regular guy like the rest of us. I mean, doesn't everybody own a big ranch? Or at least wish that they owned a big ranch?

And while Kerry wears LL Bean hunting gear, Bush wears denim shirts.

Clearly, George W. Bush is the real American!

[Tom Crick]

"It's not just a matter of Kerry looking French. Even worse, he actually speaks French! He speaks it!"

Really, if you have to trust one of two people, and one of 'em speaks French and the other one speaks down home--who are you gonna trust? I mean, you gotta trust somebody, otherwise, how are you gonna know what's goin' on?

[mike]

"Kerry would've been worse"
If Kerry was elected President then the fiscal situation would've been better according to history. A paper written by Doug Bandow called "The Conservative Case for Voting Democratic" from CATO, suggest that fiscal responsibility is best achieved when one of the parties (meaning Democrate or Republican) has controll over the legislative branch and other the party has controll of the executive branch.
If seems that party unity out weighs responsible legislation in Washington. If the Kerry adminstration was in power than the Republican controlled House and Senate would've fought over every little thing that the Kerry adminstration proposed.
So I think (yes I'm actually goning to say it) Kerry (according to history) would've been better for the country fically.

P.S. If you want to read the article just google the title.

[Uncle Ernie]

the guy looked French

And if he had been against the war, then he could have pounded this issue and picked up the libertarian vote. Are there any libertarians in Ohio?

[Tom Crick]

"And if he had been against the war, then he could have pounded this issue and picked up the libertarian vote."

Maybe joe'll correct me on this, but I think he would have done a lot better if he hadn't said that he would have supported the war even after discovering that the case for war was bullshit.

...He didn't use those words exactly.

[joe]

That's all well and good, but on the other hand, Kerry made the wild, slanderous allegation that American soldiers committed atrocities during the Vietnam War. I mean, come on, the man's obviously a pathological liar. Who ever heard of such a thing.

Yep, Michael Moore sure is fat.

[joe]

Tom, he should have just come out and said what he felt. Stupid DC lifer political consultants.

[thoreau]

Let's not forget that Kerry got his money from his rich wife, while Dubya got it the old-fashioned way: Extracting favors from his father's cronies in the public and private sectors.

[J]

Tom, joe, and thoreau,

Why in the sweet holy fuck do you hate America?

[Steve]

Joe, why do you assume "what he really felt" wasn't the jumble of mish-mash he actually said? Why assume that everything good is the real Kerry, and everything bad is those damned consultants?

[Kris]

And whereas Kerry owns a big fancy house

No!, Kerry owns an estate whereas Bush owns a ranch. And let me tell you, there is a big difference between the two (REALLY!) despite the fact they both have guest (slave) quarters) 😉

I can't wait til 2008. Kill me already

[Kris]

joe,

"Neither DOD nor Congress can reliably know how much the war is costing and details of how appropriated funds are being spent,"

This absolutely would not be the case were Kerry the president!!! Come on now, back me up joe!;-)

BTW I despise Bush(I'll bet that filfthy bastard offers a diet pepsi to the UPS driver), but if it had only been Kerry... 🙂

[Kahn]

Asking for concrete numbers is such a reality-based notion.

How can you put a price on freedom?

No, the question is, how can you put a price tag on being safe enough? This is the nanny state we're talking about, and this time (with the terrorists) they got themselves a live, on-the-hoof problem to worry about.

Something tells me that if Kerry had won, we still wouldn't be any better off fiscally. Dems and Reps are doing the cross-over thing too much these days. And we're talking about the war on terror, which as everyone knows, you cannot put a price tag on.

I believe the spending would have continued out of control. The difference would have been what our dough got spent on. And only a slight difference at that.

Okay, sorry, I'll come to my senses now. Everybody here knows the significant difference between incompetence and incoherence.

If Kerry had been elected, Katrina would have hit some insignificant island in the Gulf and NO would be safe and sound today. That's because Kerry, unlike the evil Burning Bush, is sensitive to the environmentalist view point. Mother Earth would have sensed this and spared us.

Or at least, Kerry would have found a way to buy out NO after the storm, without spending money. It's Zen, get it? To spend, without spending, that is the art.

And the Iraq war would already be ended. Kerry would have fought the war, without fighting (like he did in Nam, far as I can tell). And we'd have ushered in a flat tax. And everything would be peachy keen and rosey and we'd be in heaven today.

Instead we got that damned rancher. I just can't stand it, knowing how much better off we could have been.

[beckmesser]

Do you guys have a point or do you just enjoy bitching?

[Isaac Bartram]

....or do you just enjoy bitching?

What, you got somethin' better ta do?

[quasibill]

I think we would have been slightly better off fiscally under Kerry - as someone above said (citing Bandow) - split government spends less.

That said, the one thing that really kept me from voting Kerry on purely utilitarian grounds was his plan for Iraq - "stay the course, but do it better!" That, IMHO, was a recipe for disaster. We'd be right where we are now, with all kinds of problems between the Shia, Kurds and Sunni - but instead of taking the collar for the whole sorry affair, the neocons would have had a fall guy. "If only Bush would have won, none of this would have happened!" And we'd be invading Iran and Syria like clockwork in 2009 under Jeb.

That's why I ended up "wasting" my vote on a 3rd party.

[thoreau]

I enjoy bitching. We may not be fixing anything, but we're having fun and meeting nice people, some of whom are now friends of mine in real life as well as on the internet.

If nothin else comes of time spent shooting the breeze with libertarians, at least I'll know some nice people. We can share a big cell together when they build the concentration camps for dissidents 🙂

[thoreau]

Of course, as libertarians we won't actually "share." We will engage in mutually beneficial exchange. I, for instance, will use my mathematical talent to devise methods for encrypting messages. mediageek and Jason Ligon, being big fans of weaponry, will start new careers as makers of fine shanks. Jennifer, the nicotine addict, will smuggle the smokes in. Stevo, the HR guy, will discover a talent for running the work detail racket. And joe will finally discover that he's really a private sector man, and become the leading distributor of interstate commerce.

It shall be a truly entrepreneurial concentration camp, until they liquidate us to destroy evidence of their crimes before invading EU and Chinese forces arrive.

[Ruthless]

Boy, thoreau, you can sure spread the Santorum.

[Warren]

And joe will finally discover that he's really a private sector man, and become the leading distributor of interstate commerce.

Dare to dream thoreau.

[drf]

Thoreau -

I'd like to nominate Steven Crane for the infiltrate, search, and destroy missions.

happy friday.

[Jim Henley]

Thoreau's post makes me wish I was one of the cool kids. But maybe I'll get locked up with some of the Cato chicks. They're SMOKIN'.

[anon]

Kahn,

Don't be ridiculous. If Kerry had been elected, we would have signed Kyoto, thereby avoiding Katrina entirely by consigning hurricanes to the dustbin of history.

[thoreau]

Elections don't determine whether hurricanes will hit.

Elections determine who will allocate money for the aftermath.

Does anybody here seriously believe that the GOP Congress would grudgingly go along with it if Kerry wanted $200 billion for Katrina relief? Oh, sure, they'd give him some money. But $200 billion? I think not.

(And yes, I know, they haven't actually given him the $200 billion yet, but does anybody here seriously believe that they won't?)

[Ruthless]

Go ahead, Jim Henley.
Here, we prefer chicks that don't smoke.

[joe]

"Why in the sweet holy fuck do you hate America?"

Bad beer, bad cheese, bad bread.

"Joe, why do you assume "what he really felt" wasn't the jumble of mish-mash he actually said?" He's been my junior Senator for two "decades now, and I've learned that while his opinions may be verbally incoherent, the ideas underlying them are always consistent and well thought out. In this case, the opinion he expressed not only sounded incoherent, the idea behind it didn't make any sense either.

If Kerry had been elected, Katrina would have hit some insignificant island in the Gulf and NO would be safe and sound today." Yeah, that's what the complaint is, that Bush didn't divert the hurricaine. That's it exactly.

"Instead we got that damned rancher." Rancher my ass. If I win the lottery and buy a yacht, that won't make me a fisherman. Besides, the guy's scared of horsies.

"Do you guys have a point or do you just enjoy bitching?" Twelve parts bitching to one part "I told you so."

[JDM]

"But hey, the guy looked French, doesn't like crappy cheese on his sandwiches, and only went NEAR Cambodia when he said he went INTO Cambodia - before actually going into Cambodia later."

"Oh and why haven't any propaganda victims jumped in and made a strawman out of joe's comment yet."

The idoiots may have run all the interesting commentors off of this board, but at least the irony is funnier.

[JDM]

"idoiots"

Even my irony is funnier!

[thoreau]

JDM-

To be honest, I do feel kinda bad about running Mona away. She had a lot of insightful things to say, and I got too sarcastic about her.

[mk]

Let's not forget that Kerry got his money from his rich wife

Hey, it worked for Mohammed.

[joe]

There is nothing ironic about a JDM post appearing on a thread, complaining about a lack of interesting commenters.

[JDM]

Or you complaining that someone else's comments aren't interesting...

[Tom Crick]

"To be honest, I do feel kinda bad about running Mona away."

I'm not sure we ran her away. I think she just didn't like what many of us thought.

[thoreau]

Tom-

I think I could have been nicer. And all the jokes about cancelling subscriptions probably don't endear us to her. Of course, I've been just as guilty as anybody.

[Katrina Victim]

They gave me nothing now it's all I've got
FEMA, they're the ones to blame
They fucked up big time
And they'll do it again

[FEMA Administrator]

We have come here for forgiveness
You have come to claim your dead
Karl Rove's here to play Jesus
To the poll numbers he dreads

You say "Superdome's a shithole"
"Superdome's full of crime"
We asked you to enter
Then we let you starve

[Shelby]

thoreau:

You seem to have a pretty comprehensive vision for your microtopia. So tell me, in this fantasy land, who has the job of fixing Reason's servers? 'cause they sure are slacking off here in reality.

[drf]

thoreau:

you've GOT to be kidding..... (re: 11:27am comment)

[thoreau]

No joke. She has had interesting things to say. OK, the exchanges in July weren't so fruitful, but overall she's been an interesting commenter. There's a lot where I disagree with her, but so what?

Then again, I'm one of the people who used to lament the absence of Gary Gunnels. But his latest reincarnation has been a bit much lately.

Can we swap Hakluyt for Mona?

[joe]

Mona's biggest contribution was to repeat talking points from the Swift Boat people. Once, when I responded with a point that wasn't being made by the Kerry campaign, she actually wrote, "Why would you make that argument? The Kerry campaign isn't making that argument!"

Mona was an obnoxious astroturf sock puppet.

I'm cancelling my...uh...nevermind.

[Stevo Darkly]

Do you guys have a point or do you just enjoy bitching?

Didn't you know that BLOG stands for "Bitch, Lurk, Or Go"?

Stevo, the HR guy, will discover a talent for running the work detail racket.

Just a point of clarification: I'm not really an HR guy. My job is to write stuff that explains to employees what the hell the HR guys are thinking.* Trying to get other people organized isn't one of my talents.

*Which is what I should be doing now. "The HRA and the FSA: Why we have both, and how to use them without getting FUBARed by the IRS. In 500 words or less. Before 5 o'clock."

Later, debaters.

[thoreau]

joe-

OK, the Swiftboat stuff wasn't Mona's finest hour. But, dammit, I remember thinking at one point that she made nice contributions!

It's weird: I can think of specific instances where I thought she went off the deep end, but when I try to remember her positive contributions I get a vague, fuzzy, but warm feeling. There was something good there, dammit! At some point!

It was before the swiftboats. I remember that much. Before Nam resurfaced and changed everything. It did something to my memory, man, and I wasn't even alive when Nam was going on. Scary.

It might even be earlier. I remember a year and a half ago, when Julian Sanchez sort of endorsed Dean, she basically demanded his head on a platter.

Do I have to go all the way back to 2003?

[thoreau]

I've gone through some old threads, and for the most part I like what Mona has had to say. Do I always agree? No. But as long as she isn't canceling subscriptions, pining for "the good old days of Reason", or demanding Julian's head on a platter she's usually a solid contributor.

[Ruthless]

One hand for posting; the other for moaning.
Helen Keller Mona.
I'm afraid she's gone the way of the Little Buddy of the SS Minnow.... at least cyberspacially speaking.