Reply #19: Recherché du trillions perdu [View All]

[Jcrowley]

Recherché du trillions perdu
By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor


Jul 20, 2006, 00:43


Pardon my bebop French, paraphrasing Marcel Proust’s famous novel, Recherché Du Temps Perdu, which is about his childhood memories flashed to life by a piece of tea-soaked toast whose taste reminds him of a childhood cookie. In my case, Recherché du trillions perdu (Remembrance of trillions lost) was triggered by seeing that tidbit Donald Rumsfeld gave us on September 10, 2001: that the Pentagon could not account for $2.3 trillion dollars. It had vanished in the rabbit hole and the story was buried the next day under the rubble of 911. Merde.

And in fact Rummy lamented that was $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. One Jim Minnery, a former marine turned whistle-blower, risked his job at the Defense Finance And Accounting Service when he asked about the millions missing from one defense agency‘s balance sheets. Minnery attempted to follow the money, criss-crossing the country looking for clues, only to have his boss look at him and say, “Why do you care about this stuff.” He was reassigned and the booboo written off.

And the memory flashes forward to January 31, 2005, and the Pentagon announces that Rabbi Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon Comptroller, has Misplaced a Trillion Dollars. In fact, al Jazeera (of all news outlets) reported a “General Accounting Office report found Defence inventory systems so lax that the US Army lost track of 56 airplanes, 32 tanks and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units.” How could all this have been lost in my memory? Of course, Rabbi Zackheim resigned, complaining that the pressure of keeping track of all that loot was too much trouble.

<snip>

And if memory serves, before that, from 1985 to 1987, he was under secretary of defense for planning and resources, and held various senior Pentagon posts in the Reagan madhouse. Before that with the Congressional Budget Office. Then on to Corporate VP of Systems Planning Corporation, a high-tech research, analysis, and manufacturing firm, then Chief Executive Officer and President of SPC International, Inc. In 1998, Zakheim, expert in ballistic missiles, worked with the Rumsfeld Commission. And more, yes, he is a long-time Bush crony, policy advisor to Governor Bush in the 2000 campaign theft. Yes, it all comes back.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1015.shtml