From the article : >"The Pentagon alone has never been audited, leaving roughly $8.5 trillion in taxpayer dollars unaccounted for since 1996, the first year it

From the article : >"The Pentagon alone has never been audited, leaving roughly $8.5 trillion in taxpayer dollars unaccounted for since 1996, the first year it was supposed to be audited." Wow - that means an average of $500 billion per year of taxpayer money unaccounted since then! From reading the article, one distinct impression is that the real reason for failed accounting may be simpler and more troubling than all the other obvious ones : because it is so much easier to hide inefficiency, incompetence, and gross abuse/misuse of funds if there are no proper accounting systems in place. The freedom from oversight can be addicting. While there may be no grand conspiracy in place at the top to achieve this - the will to fix what is broken could certainly be weaker if it gives you the freedom to do as you please.