Pentagon Rejigging the Cost of Material to Ukraine
Last Thursday, the AP ran a story headlined, “$3 Billion Accounting Error Means Pentagon Can Send More Weapons to Ukraine.”
There’s a lot of good material in this story about the Pentagon’s crack-addled accountants, and how they slipped a few decimals like everyone does from time to time, but the fact is: this was no mistake. Like mafia accountants, what the Pentagon’s accountants did was go back and re-value all the weapons that have been sent to Ukraine so far at a lower “current value” (who knows) versus the weapons’ replacement value (what they paid for it).
Here’s how the Pentagon explained their brilliant idea that nobody ever thought of before:
“During our regular oversight process of presidential drawdown packages, the Department discovered inconsistencies in equipment valuation for Ukraine. In some cases, ‘replacement cost’ rather than ‘net book value’ was used, therefore overestimating the value of the equipment drawn down from U.S. stocks,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh.
Book value is what’s left after you depreciate the asset. And, it won’t just be $3 billion, either. They aren’t done re-calculating:
A defense official said the Pentagon is still trying to determine exactly how much the total surplus will be. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the comptroller has asked the military services to review all previous Ukraine aid packages using the proper cost figures. The result, said the official, will be that the department will have more available funding authority to use as the Ukraine offensive nears.
Here’s a simple example: Let’s say Nancy Pelosi tells you to go ahead and take $20 worth of ice cream from her freezer, and hands you her last shopping receipt. You can see from the receipt that it means you can only take a single pint of the special Swiss bourbon-cherry ice cream that Nancy likes. But then you say, hold on a minute, that ice cream is in a fridge. It lost value the moment Nancy’s butler loaded it in the Towncar. You figure Nancy would have to sell the unopened pints on Craigslist as used, for only $5 each.
So instead of just one pint, you grab yourself four pints, two of the Swiss bourbon-cherry plus two of the Argentinian sustainable-chocolate variety.
That’s exactly what the Pentagon is doing, except they’re grabbing F-16s, Patriot missile batteries, and cruise missiles.
Instead of pointing out the Pentagon’s kleptocratic creative accounting, corporate media is framing it as a slapstick narrative, a goofy “accounting error” or a silly mixup or something. You know, the million-dollar-toilet seat kind of thing.
Don’t buy it. They’re crooks, a thousand times worse than tax evaders, stealing from our military inventory, that’s all. Call it what it is.
Consistent with other mendacious corporate media takes, the propagandistic New York Times ran a story yesterday labeling Russia’s victory in Bakhmut as only a “Pyrrhic victory,” meaning a costly win that accomplished nothing.
