Bringing Light Into Darkness - News & Analysis · Bringing Light Into Darkness - News & Analysis

What if Profiteering from War was Outlawed? (7/17/23) (Part 2/2)

·26 min·1 clip

Kashgarian says Pentagon contractors can sell one item to NASA for about $300 and the same item to the Pentagon for over $10,000.

The episode opens by revisiting the fight over audit access at State and USAID. It connects that resistance to the Biden administration's use of those agencies in auditing Ukraine expenditures, and the contradiction is hard to ignore. The show treats that as the main point. John Sopko's letter is framed as the key piece of evidence, with the agencies accused of ignoring communications, declining interviews, and blocking international travel for field research. The host keeps returning to why that matters. The watchdog needed the information for reviews tied to Kabul's collapse, the transfer of funds to the Taliban, and humanitarian programming in Afghanistan. Past cooperation is acknowledged, but the letter's tone suggests the agencies have moved from ordinary friction to what Sopko calls a premeditated position of obstruction. The conversation then turns to how Pentagon audits are actually done. Rather than a simple in-house exercise, the work is described as being handled by private contractors or contractor teams, which means the dispute is less about audit quality than about what happens after the audit results come back. The show then widens the frame. It notes that members of both parties have proposed different ways to deal with the Pentagon's inability to account for more than 39 percent of its assets. The criticism is not limited to one party. The episode points out that House Republican leadership is only allowing Republican versions of that accountability push to move ahead this year. A stricter alternative is mentioned in passing: Barbara Lee has proposed consequences if the Pentagon cannot pass its audit. The broader argument stays blunt. If the public wants accountability for Ukraine, it should want accountability for the full military footprint of the United States in most of the countries on the planet. The episode closes by grounding that claim in Afghanistan, where left-behind weapons have repeatedly ended up in Taliban hands and where listeners are urged to think about what public money should fund instead. It ends by pointing attention to National Priorities Project, its reports, and the larger warfare state the group documents.

As heard by us

A measured critique of war spending, oversight failures, and the gap between claims and accountability.

Part 2 stays focused on the machinery of war spending and the question of who is meant to keep it in check. It moves from State and USAID resisting oversight on Afghanistan-related reviews to Pentagon accountability, Ukraine aid, and the familiar risk of U.S.

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Why you'd press play

You want war-spending scrutiny that follows the money past the slogans.

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