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October 28, 2004
My Calculator Ran Out of Zeroes
New Audit Critical of Halliburton Work in Kuwait:
The audit by the Inspector General for the Coalition Provisional Authority, said a random sample of 3,032 records of items valued at more than $3.7 million, projected KBR could not account for 42.8 percent, or 1,297, of these goods.
Missing weapons, missing prisoners, missing goods... What's the big deal. The weapons we claimed were there didn't exist and the ones that did exist we don't care about. Missing prisoners, they're all terrorists anyway. And missing goods. It's not like we don't have money to burn: check out the latest $260 million plane, "designed to fight a potential Soviet enemy that no longer exists, and a Third World War that - if it ever happens - will be very different from what could have been imagined in 1981." We apparently have 277 orders on these, my calculator ran out of zeros. Done by hand, the total cost looks like $72,020,000,000 unless I missed a zero or two.
Some years ago there was a serious attempt in the Congress to scrap the whole project, especially as the revised cost exceeded four times the original estimate.It failed largely because of pressure from military contractors and labour unions in states that will directly benefit from this multi-billion dollar programme.
The introduction of the new fighter jet comes in the same week that its manufacturer, Lockheed-Martin, announced a 40% rise in profits as it processes orders for its next generation of fighter aircraft, the F-35.
Posted by zeynep at October 28, 2004 06:39 PM
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Comments
> check out the latest $260 million plane
heh. "wait til they start production of the new joint strike fighter" or joint attack fighter, whatever it's being called:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/xplanes/
As for "that bird": From an engineering-type perspective, Lockheed's wining design for the X-35, there, was /really/ a feat -- for one, in the way that they have the vertical-thrust engine set-up to work, in the center of the fuselage, geared on a drive-line to the primary, horizontal-thrust engine.
Yet, from a lucrative-budget contractor's perspective .. well, relatedly, I think that there has been far far too much /"prestige pricing"/ going on, throughout this "modern" world.
and I'd not noticed, before, that it might even be going-on, about governmental contracts
(also: "biotechnology", for instance -- $$$ for the contractors; flash and hype and "technological" light-headedness, as well as the perception as if they're doing their job -- with machines, alone -- for the executives and/or legislators)
...and a whole US that, I wonder, might have a big sink-hole growing underneath it.
("figuratively speaking, lest that would be, by any reader, misunderstood" -- kidding, somewhat, but perhaps indicatively so, "one might hope")
--
"and another thing" : there may be a "technological nationalism",
besides that there appears to be some wide, general ignorance of the fact that /education/ is where national /security/ doth begin.
Posted by: Sean Champ at October 28, 2004 11:47 PM