It ain't about $500 hammers any more, folks.
The Washington Post tells us today that "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."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/21/AR2005092102105_pf.html
When I read this I kinda snorted to myself, asking "So, what's new?" <snark> After all, in 2003 the GAO reported the Pentagon couldn't account for
$1 TRILLION.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/05/18/MN251738.DTL
And in 2004, $5 Billion went missing from the Iraq Reconstruction Funds.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/10/16/iraq_audit_cant_find_billions?mode=PF
Today's missing billions come on top of January's CNN report that $9 Billion "of money spent on Iraqi reconstruction is unaccounted for because of inefficiencies and bad management.
An inspector general's report said the U.S.-led administration that ran Iraq until June 2004 is unable to account for the funds."
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/30/iraq.audit/
A recent poster on Kos, ahgast at the idea that BushCo might have been involved in any way with 9/11, asked what possible benefit the neo-cons would realize from such actions? While the potential trillions from Iraqi oil seem motivation enough, the billions missing here and there aren't small change.
Good old Marine Smedley Butler. He had it right. "War is a Racket."