With the Pentagon In Charge, Just How Safe Are We?
Or
Capitalism is Alive and Well Where Ever Our Tax Dollars Are Spent
by James Glaser
March 31, 2008

If you have ever been in the military, you know the officers in charge should never be allowed to handle the money. Spending your career in the United States military does not give you any concept of how a business should be run. In the military you spend tax dollars, and you quickly learn that if you try and save the country money, your command's next budget is cut.

The Pentagon has to deal with projects that constantly have cost overruns. Have you ever heard of a new weapons system coming in under budget? Our military has no idea of how the real world works, so we shouldn't be surprised when some new waste of taxpayer money comes to light.

This one does seem a little more flagrant than others of recent years though. Again, we only get word of this latest scandal from the foreign press. This time from Suzanne Goldenberg, writing for the Guardian, out of Great Britain:

The Pentagon entrusted a 22-year-old previously arrested for domestic violence and having a forged driving licence to be the main supplier of ammunition to Afghan forces at the height of the battle against the Taliban, it was reported yesterday.

It seems our military decided that decided that Efraim Diversoli, an enterprising young man from Miami Beach, who has a one-man operation in the munitions industry should be entrusted to supply the Afghan army and police force with the ammuniation they would need to fight the Taliban in their country. Diversoli's company goes by the name, "AEY," but nobody seems to know what AEY stands for.

This was a huge contract and totaled some $300,000,000 dollars. Efraim decided to make all the money he could, and cut a few too many corners in his neeed to fill this contract.

Much of the ammunition comes from the ageing stockpiles of the old communist bloc, including stockpiles that the state department and Nato have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed....

When things like this come to light, it makes you think of the hundred dollar hammers and ashtrays the Pentagon has bought in the past, but when you start getting to 300 million dollar contracts for a known commodity like ammunition, you would think our military would know what they were doing. Of course you have to know that George Bush's name would pop up in any article about wasteful spending, and this article has his name in it, too.

The report on AEY was the latest instance of private firms securing lucrative defence contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan under the Bush administration's policy of privatising growing aspects of the military.

Most likely 300 million is just the tip of the iceburg when it comes to the fraud that will come to light in the next few years. With hundreds of billions, some say trilluions of tax dollars being spent on George Bush's wars, it is surprising that this is the first one that has come to light involving a young man out to make a buck.

It would be interesting to find out who in the Pentagon did the background check to approve this contract. You might think this next quote from the Guardian article would have raised some red flags.

In 2006, AEY was among 10 firms bidding on a contract to supply 52 kinds of ammunition for the Afghan security forces. But while his business was taking off, Diversoli was accused of violent behaviour involving two girlfriends and the parking attendant at his apartment building. In December 2006, Diversoli was charged with battery after beating up the parking attendant, according to the newspaper. Police recovered a forged driving licence from Diversoli's flat which led to a separate charge. He entered a programme for first time offenders to avoid trial.

Here is the real kicker, it seems that AEY and Efraim Diversoli have been selling arms and ammunition to the Pentagon since at least 2004 to the tune of $200 million a year. That means the Pentagon has been giving two hundred million dollar contracts to teenagers. I still want to know who in the Pentagon makes these contracts, and who does the background checks on the contract bidders.

Some people say capitalism is dead, but not in the Bush administartion, where a teenager with and office and a letterhead can supply the Pentagon with whatever it might need to continue with the wars that George Bush has given them.

Efraim Diversoli might have let things get a little out of hand with his personal life, and maybe the 300 million contract was more than he could handle, but I have to admire the guy for boldly taking a pentagon contract and running with it. If he could have found the right ammo, there is no telling how far he would have gone in the future. No, capitalism is not dead in America.

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