The Pentagon's Dark Budget

The Pentagon, headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, taken from an airplane in January 2008. Wikipedia

Salon/TomDispatch.com: The Pentagon’s dark money: Billions of federal dollars are vanishing into thin air

It's not just that its books don't add up. The Department of Defense is actively disguising how it spends its funds.

Now you see it, now you don’t. Think of it as the Department of Defense’s version of the street con game, three-card monte, or maybe simply as the Pentagon shuffle. In any case, the Pentagon’s budget is as close to a work of art as you’re likely to find in the U.S. government — if, that is, by work of art you mean scam.

The United States is on track to spend more than $600 billion on the military this year — more, that is, than was spent at the height of President Ronald Reagan’s Cold War military buildup, and more than the military budgets of at least the next seven nations in the world combined. And keep in mind that that’s just a partial total. As an analysis by the Straus Military Reform Project has shown, if we count related activities like homeland security, veterans’ affairs, nuclear warhead production at the Department of Energy, military aid to other countries, and interest on the military-related national debt, that figure reaches a cool $1 trillion.

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WNU Editor: The focus is on the Pentagon .... but this is President Obama's Pentagon, and he is sure as hell not going to have these numbers (and where the money is going) published.