Once upon a time, Sen. Rand Paul called on his Senate colleagues to pass a rider on a $40 billion in weapons shipments to Ukraine, calling for an independent inspector to ensure careful accounting of where the Ukraine shipments went.
They called him a meanie, a killjoy, someone who didn't want to "help" the poor beleaguered Ukrainians in their hour of need, and his rider was ignored.
CBS hastened to note that it was just like him to do that; he was a staller, an obstructionist:
Paul, a libertarian who often opposes U.S. intervention abroad, said he wanted language inserted into the bill, without a vote, that would have an inspector general scrutinize the new spending. He has a long history of demanding last-minute changes by holding up or threatening to delay bills on the brink of passage, including measures dealing with lynching, sanctioning Russia, preventing a federal shutdown, the defense budget, government surveillance and providing health care to the Sept. 11 attack first responders.
Paul himself, though persisted:
Paul, who unsuccessfully sought his party's 2016 presidential nomination, argued that the added spending was more than the U.S. spends on many domestic programs, was comparable to Russia's entire defense budget and would deepen federal deficits and worsen inflation. Last year's budget deficit was almost $2.8 trillion but is likely headed downward, and the bill's spending is less than 0.2% of the size of the U.S. economy, suggesting its impact on inflation would be negligible.
"No matter how sympathetic the cause, my oath of office is to the national security of the United States of America," Paul said. "We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the U.S. economy."
They should have listened to him about that extra inspection, which could have been had at a miniscule cost, because the problems seen now would have been caught and halted sooner.
The Pentagon had its own inspector for the military aid, as the story noted, and now he's found a lot of problems.
According to ZeroHedge:
A report from the Department of Defense Inspector General found Pentagon employees in Poland failed to follow procedures to account for military equipment being transferred to Ukraine. In the shipments of weapons monitored by the office, Pentagon employees failed to properly track the weapons in three of five shipments.
"DoD personnel did not have the required accountability of the thousands of defense items that they received and transferred at Jasionka, [Poland]," it stated. "We observed that DoD personnel did not fully implement their standard operating procedures to account for defense items and could not confirm the quantities of defense items received against the quantity of items shipped for three of five shipments we observed."
Where'd it go? How much was really sent? Why couldn't they do this the right way so as to ensure that none of the weapons were intercepted, stolen, or sent to terrorists or other bad actors?
Now they're going to have to spend millions to track the aid down, and who knows if they'll ever find it. That aid could end up in terrorist or enemy hands, and eventually be turned on Americans, much the same way the Obama administration's gun-running operation to Mexican cartels promote gun control in the U.S. called "Operation Fast and Furious" ended up killing U.S. Border Patrol agents as collateral damage.
According to the ZeroHedge story, some of these weapons are already turning up in Finland and in African states, where they are wreaking mayhem.
The problem was one of accounting and accountability, a paper-pusher's problem:
The Pentagon does not "have reasonable assurance that their database of all defense items transferred to the [Ukraine] via air transport in Jasionka was accurate or complete." The report added, "14 The DoD may risk providing more or less equipment than authorized by [President Joe Biden], and may not be able to verify the quantity of all defense items before they are transferred to [Ukraine]."
One example in the inspector general report explains how weapons are shipped without a manifest. "One shipment containing thousands of small arms, night vision optics devices, and various types of cold weather gear did not include an air manifest." The report continues, "DoD personnel opened crates to identify the types of defense items contained within the crates, but even then the personnel could not verify whether the number of items they identified represented the true number shipped."
A lot of problems of quantity were noted, as if some went to Ukrainians and some went to someone else.
Sure, some could have been secret intelligence operations by the CIA or a similar agency. But the Pentagon would know that and adjust its reporting accordingly. It would be odd if they didn't.
It went to someone else and nobody knows whom.
In light of Joe Biden's various underhanded deals and obligations with foreign sources, one wonders if these might be favors returned, or some other nefarious off the books operation for political purposes.
We don't know. We do know it will be a heckuva mess to clean up, given that large amounts of money and goods were distributed quickly, which is an open window for fraud and corruption.
The Biden administration and leaders in Congress have insisted that establishing an office to track the billions in weapons being sent to Ukraine is unnecessary. However, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, John Sopko, said without more oversight, weapons will end up on the black market.
Without sufficient oversight, aid "gets stolen or diverted to local oligarchs or local politicians, or just the average Ukrainian will see the waste," Sopko explained. The result would mean the loss of "support of the Ukrainian government by the average Ukrainian who’s fighting, dying and bleeding at the front. And that’s what we saw in Afghanistan… And we, the donors, the US, were identified as supporting the corrupt oligarchs."
So Rand Paul was right all along. That Special Inspector was exactly the kind of guy that Paul wanted. He's issued his forecasts, those forecasts came true.
What a dirty, dangerous game this Ukraine war is becoming for us.
Image: Official, via Wikipedia // public domain