There’s a double standard out there…..in case you haven’t noticed…..we’ve seen it time and time again….the little guy takes it on the chin, while the standards appear different if you know the right folks, work the right angles, or toe the right lines…..case in point, the Pentagon just failed a major annual audit….again….for the seventh time!

20 years ago…(hard to believe)….I came home from my second tour overseas and was reassigned from being a team leader to the Headquarters Company Commander…..any of you have ever commanded an HHC know that one of the things that suddenly falls into your lap is personal responsibility for the largest property book among your peers…..all the ash and trash, all the excess gear, all the massive end items that make up the property book are assigned to your signature…..it is daunting, and depending on what kind of unit you are in the inventory can be huge…..so there I was as the newly minted HHC Commander….but I had learned as a young LT that you never sign for it until you can touch it….you don’t gloss over the Change-of-Command inventories because if something you signed for isn’t really there….well, guess who gets to pay for it later?.....yep!.....So I took command and then made the date to inspect everything, and I mean everything…..if there was a took kit I wanted to see every tool….if there was a weapon I wanted to see the cleaning kit that went with it…..extra IBA, uniforms in supply, every boot, brush and bale of wire…..lawdy dawdy everybody show me your stuff or at least show me your sub-hand receipts that show who has it in their possession right then and there…..now in my Civil Affairs Battalion there were two line companies and one HHC…..we all changed commands at roughly the same time…..the other two commanders did a handshake-backslap with their buddies and signed the papers and went to dinner…..but I did mine from stem to stern….you see that unit, in just 5 years, had done three deployments…..Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq…..that’s 3 of 5 years totally mobilized with gear traveling all over the world….I knew there were shortfalls and I wasn’t going to tote them on my books…..and I was right…..I came up with over $150,000 worth of missing gear and equipment…..and I wouldn’t sign for it…..some of it was explainable…..3 years in hostile fire zones, lateral transfers of equipment to other gaining units, people coming and going….its madness and I get that…..but some was just poor accountability and my Battalion Commander was apoplectic….he wanted those inventories signed off and turned in….but I told him that I would not sign for what wasn’t there….but I would report the losses on what was known as a FLIPL….

A Financial Liability Investigation of Property Loss (FLIPL) is a process used by the Army to determine if someone is financially responsible for the loss, damage, or destruction of government property…..basically, it’s a report of everything you can’t find…..it requires an investigation…..it can get ugly in a hurry…..My Commander finally realized I was right but then he turned to the other two Commanders and when he realized they had not been thorough he made them redo their inventories and lo and behold they came up with massive shortfalls and more FLIPL’s…..it was awful….but it was right….so we ran it up the chain to Brigade…who freaked out and ran it up to the CA Command…..who then freaked out and ran it all the up to Fort Bragg’s Civil Affairs and Psyops Command (USACAPOC)……the powers that be passed their own freak out back downhill and required that every Civil Affairs unit stop what they were doing and conduct a line by line inventory of their property books and the FLIPL’s started rolling in…..I like to say that I handed in my report and shut down a whole major Army Command overnight…..

But the freak out was warranted……millions of dollars of military equipment was missing or unaccounted for…..it was not always about negligence, but some of it was…..some of it was just poor accounting and lackadaisical inventories…..but these are taxpayer funded items…..they will break, they will be destroyed, they will be stolen, they will be lost…..but at the very least we owed the taxpayers something more than just a shrug of our shoulders…..

But apparently the Pentagon brass can get away with it…..of the 28 reporting entities within the Pentagon force structure that were audited 15 of them received what is known as a disclaimer of opinion meaning that the inspectors were not even given enough information to determine why the shortages and missing items were not accountable…..

Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord said, "Significant work remains and challenges lie ahead, but our annual audit continues to be a catalyst for Department-wide financial management reform, resulting in greater financial integrity, transparency, and better-supported warfighters,"…..a catalyst he says…..well, I hope so….because at the unit level we weren’t allowed to have deficiencies…..we shut down training to locate the smallest of end items…..I was in a unit once that had one M16 rifle stolen…..one!....everything shut down, the authorities were called in….every vehicle, every footlocker, every nook and cranny was searched…..it was a big hairy deal…..but the Pentagon can lost or abandon a billion dollars worth of equipment in Afghanistan and shrug their shoulders when the Taliban use it in their parades…….

Comedian and sometimes liberal pundit Jon Stewart interviewed Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks about this on C-Span over the weekend…..she tried to laugh it off at first, but to his credit he wouldn’t let her just giggle and began to hold her feet to the fire…..in Stewarts words, most people would consider that “waste fraud and abuse”…..our current Deputy Defense Secretary then realized this was turning into a serious moment and jumped in with “I’m trying to understand where you’re going…I mean other than the dollars does it really bother you?” giggle giggle…..she went to deflect by claiming that audits and “waste fraud and abuse” are not the same thing…..okay….you’re going to go with that? Really?.....she tried to wrap it up with some form of conclusion by claiming that just because we can’t put our hands on something, or know that something went from here to there, doesn’t mean that waste fraud and abuse have occurred…..okay….let’s parse that a bit….because I don’t think that would fly in a court of law…..there is the fraud element that indicates deliberate action…..but the waste and abuse are legitimate concerns without question….if you can’t find 824 Billion dollars worth of stuff that the taxpayers paid for then maybe, just maybe theres a smidge of waste and abuse, mixed with occasional fraud….and if you don’t like the idea of it being couched as a criminal act then at the very least realize that mere negligence would get a lowly company commander fired for the same behavior…..in a court of law negligence is also actionable…..

There is a reason why Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are being tapped to review government waste…..because we have a great deal of waste in our government…..we can’t continue to fund transgender dance clubs in Bangladesh, pour money into tourism for Egypt, and build bridges to nowhere in Alaska…..we also can’t continue to tell the troops in our great military that their personal accountability of weapons and equipment is so important that they could be punished under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for failing to properly account for what they’ve signed for….while at the same time allowing the leadership of the DoD to laugh and shrug and try to say that losing billions of dollars in military equipment and supplies is not equal to claims of waste fraud and abuse…..it just is! All day long…..

We cannot have a two-tiered layer of accountability where the little guy takes it on the chin while the big guy laughs on C-Span and earns a big retirement bonus….. there is an old saying that you cannot expect what you don’t inspect…..the Pentagon expect to be inspected in the next few years to come….

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way.