On September 10, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that the Pentagon had lost, by the estimate he chose to use for his speech, 2.3 trillion dollars. Many of you good readers know about this, and are asking where the money went. That's a good question, but what really intrigues me is: Where did it come from? If you add up the entire US defense budgets from 1996 to 2001, you only come up with circa 1.6 trillion. Yet, according to Rummy, not only was that much money lost, but an ADDITIONAL 700 BILLION dollars has disappeared. Remember, we're talking about 2.3 trillion dollars "missing." Exact figures very by source, but are close to each other, so I'll deal in round numbers. To come up with 2.3 trillion dollars of military spending, you have to add up all the defense budgets from about 1991 to 2001. For all those years, the Pentagon spent hundreds of billions and didn't get a single receipt, didn't account for a single dime? Not possible, and no one's claiming that it happened. The missing money was part of some budget, but it's a number bigger than the defense budgets we're to believe it's a "part" of, so it was a part of some OTHER budget, one we don't know about. 1996 through 2001 is a lot of years for the Government Accounting Office (GAO) to fail to notice that the entire defense budget went missing. I don't believe they did fail to notice it, because the missing money wasn't on the books to begin with. It couldn't have been; it's more money than we gave them. This is not an accounting error. We know the soldiers and sailors got paid, the tanks and planes got bought, and the missiles got purchased, because the companies that made them cashed the checks, and the banks issued statements showing that the money went out and to whom it went. We know that most of that money got properly accounted for, because the GAO and OMB have been checking figures, making recommendations for savings, etc., and would have spotted a gap of any real size. We also suspect the usual drugs, cars, mansions, and hookers of all ages and sexes. But all these only add up to the official hundreds of billions, not the missing thousands of billions. Most of the missing money could never have been part of a defense budget, and could not have come from our government. It had to have come from someone else, someone who MUST want the Pentagon to do something for them. Nobody gives gifts that big but God. So, just who hired the Pentagon to do whatever they hired it to do? Who wrote those checks? What are they paying for? When do they expect it? Who is its target? How can we put a stop to this blatant prostitution? I have no answers, but I can narrow the list: not many people outside the Federal Reserve owners have access to that kind of money. And not many people beside the Federal Reserve owners want to use the American military and its loyal, devoted troops to bend the world to their will. Come to think of it, NO ONE outside the Federal Reserve owners meets those two criteria. You can't change the plantation, and there has never been a successful peasant revolt throughout history. You can, however, leave the plantation, build a position of strength, and then take the plantation from the slavers and run it according to sane principles. I'm preparing to do exactly that. I think you should, too. Joshua Daniels has been a Consulting Business Analyst for the past twelve years. More recently, he has been devoting his spare time to developing a viable alternative to the rat race, and has succeeded. Noticing little problems like this one are sort of a hobby for him. Sources 2.3 trillion Missing ­ Sept. 10, 2001 Donald Rumsfeld http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=430 2001 Highlights of the FY 2001 Request TOP LINE: The Administration is seeking $305.4 billion in Budget Authority (BA) and $277.5 billion in Outlays for the military and the defense functions of the Department of Energy. Budget Authority over the entire Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP), which covers Fiscal Years 2001-2005, is nearly $1.6 trillion. The request for FY'01 is $4.9 billion more than was proposed in last year's multi-year spending plan. In all, planned spending for the FYDP ($1, 585.3 billion) is nearly $15 billion more than last year's spending plan included for the same period. http://www.cdi.org/issues/usmi/highlightsFY01.html Highlights of the FY 2000 Request TOP LINE: The Administration is seeking $280.8 billion in Budget Authority (BA) and $274.1 billion in Outlays for the military and defense functions of the Department of Energy. Budget Authority over the entire Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP), which covers FY 2000-2005 inclusive is nearly $1.9 trillion. In all, the budget request adds $12.6 billion in new spending for FY'00, and $112 billion to the Pentagon's budget over the FYDP. http://www.cdi.org/issues/usmi/highlightsFY00.html 1999 DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE BUDGET FOR FY 1999 Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen today released details of President Clinton's Fiscal Year (FY) 1999 defense budget. It requests $257.3 billion in budget authority and $252.6 billion in outlays for the Department of Defense (DoD). http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=1566 1998 DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE BUDGET FOR FY 1998 Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen today released details of President Clinton's Fiscal Year (FY) 1998 defense budget. The FY 1998 budget begins implementation of the Administration's FY 1998-2003 Future Years Defense Program (FYDP). Both the budget and FYDP were developed under the direction of outgoing Defense Secretary William J. Perry, before Secretary Cohen was sworn into office on January 24. President Clinton's FY 1998 budget requests $250.7 billion in budget authority and $247.5 billion in outlays for the Department of Defense (DoD). 1997 http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/budget/glance97.html Budget request: 254.4 billion Projected Spending: 258.7 billion http://www.smdc.army.mil/PubAff/ArchivedPress/DoDBudget.html The President's FY 1996 budget requests $246.0 billion in budget authority and $250.0 billion in outlays for the Department of Defense. http://www.dod.gov/execsec/adr95/budget_5.html

