Rumsfeld’s “Poor Memory”

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So back in April of last year, two investigators from the Pentagon’s inspector general paid Donald Rumsfeld a little visit to ask him about “the largest defense procurement scandal in recent decades.” Nothing major, just a few questions here and there. The usual. Here’s how the interview went, according to the Washington Post:

Rumsfeld cited poor memory, loose office procedures, and a general distraction with “the wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan to explain why he was unsure how his department came to nearly squander $30 billion leasing several hundred new tanker aircraft that its own experts had decided were not needed…

[A] copy of the transcript [of the Rumsfeld interview], obtained recently by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act after a year-long wait, says a lot about how little of Rumsfeld’s attention has been focused on weapons-buying—a function that consumes nearly a fifth of the $410 billion defense budget, exclusive of expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yeah, what’s a few billion dollars anyway? Lucky for us we have a “CEO President” at the helm to make sure everything’s running smoothly…

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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