Hello everyone.
Hi. Welcome to the board.
I am new to this forum and, frankly, only stumbled upon it while researching this nutty conspiracy theory. My 14-year-old son heard about it recently and I thought I'd "google" around to see what he was talking about.
You came to a good place. We don't give conspiracists a free ride to indulge their fantasies here.
According to the transcripts from this interview the much-ballyhooed missing 2.3 trillion was know about and reported on at least as early as February of 2001. Considering Bush didn't even take office until late January of 2001, I find it hard to believe that "Rumsfeld's" pentagon not only lost 2.3 trillion, but had it discovered in an audit in less than one month. Do you honestly think Rumsfeld plotted to have 3,000 American citizens murdered to cover up money that was apparently lost on Clinton's watch?
Most of the regulars here don't believe any members of the Administration plotted it for that or any other reason. (Not to speak for Lurker, for example, but he was talking about the conspiracists not seeing the issue logically.) And that is not, despite the wearisomely routine accusations of the conspiracists, because we're all mindless Bush supporters. Many people here are not American, and a significant number of us who are have... let's just say very negative opinions of this Administration and its policies. Beyond that is a political discussion which is beside the point and outside the scope of this forum.
The important thing is that political beliefs - left, right, libertarian, whatever - are not what drives our examination of these issues. It's what can be supported with facts, evidence, sound and consistent logic.
Nor do we refrain from correcting those with whom we agree - unlike the mutual admiration and support societies (I can think of some coarser descriptions which would get me banned) which the conspiracists are used to. For example, it doesn't make sense to say that $2.3 trillion was lost "on Clinton's watch". Let's look at the numbers: DoD budgets ranged from about $250 billion (that's 10^9, for non-US members) to about $280 billion from 1992-1998, and IIRC Clinton's last budget gave DoD about $300 billion. That means for the amount to have been "lost on Clinton's watch",
all defense expenditures would had to have been "lost", meaning that we paid no military salaries, bought no planes or ships or guns or bombs or humvees or staplers or boots, and all our planes, helicopters, ships and subs sat motionless for 8 years. I think someone would have noticed.