“Most transparent administration in history” stops publishing military expenditures, arms transfers report
Posted For: Layla Godey
by:
WASHINGTON, DC- From the “most transparent administration in American history,” we find one item that has largely been buried by the mainstream media.
This week, the State Department announced that the World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers report, which has been published for over 50 years, will no longer be produced. As usual, that provision was buried deep inside the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2022 under Section 5114(b)(4).
Under that federal law, 22 U.S.C. 2593b, it required:
No later than December 31 of each year, the Secretary of State shall publish an unclassified report on world military expenditures and arms transfers.
Such report shall provide detailed, comprehensive, and statistical information regarding military expenditures, arms transfers, armed forces, and related economic data for each country of the world.
In addition, such report shall include pertinent in-depth analyses as well as highlights with respect to arms transfers and proliferation trends and initiatives affecting such developments.
Now, the State Department will no longer be reporting those transfers and expenditures after the language was buried inside the most recent National Defense Authorization Act.
NEW 🚨 The U.S. has announced it will no longer be publishing its military expenditures and arms transfers. https://t.co/VFI1CBatAz
— The Real Toria Brooke (@realtoriabrooke) August 25, 2022
Why would the “most transparent administration in history” want to do that? Especially at a time when the money spigot has been opened to pour tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine.
The announcement read:
WMEAT 2021, which the Department of State published in December 2021, is the final edition of World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers (WMEAT).
Section 5114(b)(4) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 repealed the 1994 statutory provision that required the Department of State to publish an edition of WMEAT every year.
Consistent with this repeal, the Department of State will cease to produce and publish WMEAT.
A simple Google or DuckDuckGo search for any reporting on this development comes up goose eggs. The only mainstream media source we found to report on this was a monologue by Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Friday.
The elimination of this important program comes as sources say that the United States is virtually unable to track what happens to the military equipment and weapons being sent to Ukraine ostensibly to fight against Vladimir Putin’s invading Russian army.
None other than CNN reported back in April that the U.S. “has few ways to track the substantial supply of anti-tank, anti-aircraft and other weaponry it has sent across the border into Ukraine.”
And this was four months ago, and the United States has poured many more tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine since then. Yet, our southern border goes unprotected.
Meanwhile the administration doesn’t seem to be overly concerned by the lack of accountability, with a senior defense official telling CNN that the transfer of equipment to Ukraine was vital to holding off Russian aggression.
However both current and US officials and defense analysts warned that in the long-term, some of the weapons being sent to that country could end up in the hands of other militaries or militias that may be hostile to the U.S. and our allies.
“We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero,” one source briefed on US intelligence told CNN. “It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.”
Meanwhile most recently, Sean O’Donnell, Acting Inspector General of the Department of Defense told Bloomberg that Ukrainian officials are not able to specify the exact location of arms and other military equipment supplied by the United States, with all of their accounting done on paper.
O’Donnell said Ukraine keeps track of all weapons using “hand receipts.”
“It’s all paper,” he said, while saying he has doubts Ukraine’s leadership has “much fidelity” as to where the arms end up.
He noted that “a lack of effective record keeping” also hindered efforts by the Pentagon to track weapons in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Meanwhile, O’Donnell acknowledged that NATO officials are “confident that the security was sufficient for the transfer of weapons.”
O’Donnell’s office also promised to investigate the spending of Ukraine-related expenditures, along with intelligence sharing agreements between the Pentagon and NATO allies, the effectiveness of training of Ukrainian forces, and possible arms sales in black markets.
For their part, Moscow has slammed the flow of weapons to Ukraine from the US and other Western countries, saying it “adds fuel to the fire.”
In addition, Russia warned in July that foreign weapons being supplied to Ukraine by the US and NATO were finding their way into illegal markets not only in Europe but also in the Middle East.
Are you wondering why the Democrat-controlled Congress suddenly decided to cut off transparency about where the US-supplied weapons were going and how much they cost? There’s your answer.
Transparency? You decide.
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