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Jon Stewart interviews Deputy Secretary of Defense at the Warhorse Symposium


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I really didn’t know if I should put this on the CE board or here, but whatever. It’s an extremely good interview, I’m about halfway through the entire thing. The Dep SoD clearly did not expect an actual discussion and seemed very unprepared for this: she was visibly and audibly frustrated with the questions to where she started being condescending and passive aggressive to Stewart. Stewart gets visibly angry in this clip of the conversation, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen from him: his hands were shaking slightly and his body language was definitely showing “annoyed” IMO, but he kept his tone and response professional as he was clearly & visibly holding back his annoyance to the responses:

 
Here’s the entire interview:

 

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Hicks was right. I’m always surprised by how people think Stewart’s questioning is good. It’s illogical nonsense because he doesn’t understand the issues he is asking questions about.

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23 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

She's certainly correct on what an audit is, as was Stewart.


“If you can’t tell me where it went, what am I supposed to think?”, ahem, suggests otherwise.

 

There can be waste/fraud/abuse in an organization that passes an audit, and also in one that fails an audit. There can be no waste/fraud/abuse in an organization that passes an audit, and also in one that fails an audit.

 

Hicks was correct also in her assessment of Stewart and him obfuscating his actual complaints. Just ask about the thing you actually want to ask about!

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19 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

“If you can’t tell me where it went, what am I supposed to think?”, ahem, suggests otherwise.

 

"What I would suggest [an audit is] is that, the audit that they have in the military doesn't really look at whether or not there's efficacy, it's just whether or not they got delivered the thing that they ordered." This is wrong?

He goes on to say that if you cannot show where the money was spent, in "his world" that's suggestive of waste or at least somewhat irresponsible. "I may not understand exactly the ins and outs of, and the incredible magic of, audits, but I'm a human being who lives on the Earth and can't figure out how $850b to a department means that the rank and file still have to be on foodstamps. To me, that's like corruption.  I'm sorry, and if that blows your mind and if you think that's a crazy agenda for me to have, I really think that's institutional thinking and that it's not looking at the day-to-day reality of the people you call the greatest fighting force in the world. So, again, I get back to this idea of, and I'm not looking to pick a fight with you, but I am surprised at that the reaction to these questions are 'you don't know what an audit is, bucko!', that's just weird to me"

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12 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

 

"What I would suggest [an audit is] is that, the audit that they have in the military doesn't really look at whether or not there's efficacy, it's just whether or not they got delivered the thing that they ordered." This is wrong?

He goes on to say that if you cannot show where the money was spent, in "his world" that's suggestive of waste or at least somewhat irresponsible. "I may not understand exactly the ins and outs of, and the incredible magic of, audits, but I'm a human being who lives on the Earth and can't figure out how $850b to a department means that the rank and file still have to be on foodstamps. To me, that's like corruption.  I'm sorry, and if that blows your mind and if you think that's a crazy agenda for me to have, I really think that's institutional thinking and that it's not looking at the day-to-day reality of the people you call the greatest fighting force in the world. So, again, I get back to this idea of, and I'm not looking to pick a fight with you, but I am surprised at that the reaction to these questions are 'you don't know what an audit is, bucko!', that's just weird to me"


Yes, he explains his lack of understanding quite clearly in this quote AND his actual issue is made plain too. Just ask the questions you want answers to instead of trying to frame it around something you don’t understand at all.

 

Here is the easiest way to see how pointless the audit stuff was: if the DOD passed an audit and soldiers and their families are still on food stamps, does the audit have anything to do with the poor care for the rank and file? Does it mean that the DOD isn’t handing out ridiculous contracts to their buddies in the private sector?

 

Obviously not. Audits don’t determine anything of the sort, even if he wishes they did.

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2 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Here is the easiest way to see how pointless the audit stuff was: if the DOD passed an audit and soldiers and their families are still on food stamps, does the audit have anything to do with the poor care for the rank and file? Does it mean that the DOD isn’t handing out ridiculous contracts to their buddies in the private sector?

 

I'm pretty sure the point of the audit stuff was "where is this missing money going? Why isn't it going here?", at least that's how I took it. He does not suggest passing audits means there's no misspending happening and no corruption, that was presented by Hicks as a response. Maybe I'm taking the context differently as I listened to the whole interview: the lead-up to that snippet was Stewart questioning about the insecurity as well as issues at the VA which became a discussion of budgeting, which brought up audits and asking "why" the DOD has not been able to pass theirs.

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I understand where Jon was going with the audit stuff, but I think he was going about it poorly.

 

He was essentially arguing that if you can't prove where all the money went, then that in itself is evidence of waste, fraud, or abuse. It's not. Now, operating a system with a trillion dollar budget where you're not able to track all the money probably does make it ripe for all those things, and the fact that some soldiers need to go on food stamps is probably telling that there is at the very least mismanagement, but mismanagement itself doesn't necessarily indicate those things either.

 

I'm very sympathetic to Jon's overall attitude that it's crazy to have so much money in defense and not be able to account for it all, and that obfuscation of funds is a real issue. I agree that it doesn't pass the smell test for our DoD budget to go up now that we're no longer in an overseas war (although a quick search seems to indicate that in terms of actual dollars the budget hasn't historically gone down after a war has ended.)

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