Scott Ritter argues that Americans have grown accustomed to being ripped off in an “military-industrial” nightmare. His “Why the Pentagon Is a Multitrillion-Dollar Fraud” appeared yesterday in RT, yesterday:
“Recently, the Pentagon admitted it couldn’t account for trillions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money, having failed a massive yearly audit for the sixth year running. The process consisted of the 29 sub-audits of the DOD’s various services, and only seven passed this year—no improvement over the last. These audits only began taking place in 2017, meaning that the Pentagon has never successfully passed one. This year’s failure made some headlines, was commented upon briefly by the mainstream media, and then just as quickly forgotten by an American society accustomed to pouring money down the black hole of defense spending.”
He provided a few numbers: The $877 billion defense budget was more than the $847 billion of the next ten countries in line. President Biden wants $886 billion for the 2024 defense budget, and Congress is ready to add $80 billion more to that. But some $2.3 trillion was spent on Afghanistan over two decades, resulting in a disaster. Iraq was a $758 billion investment in the 2003 invasion and subsequent decade-long occupation—a debacle. Overall, the U.S. has spent more than $1.8 trillion on its 20-year nightmare in Iraq and Syria.
