Did the Pentagon Bury Billions in Waste? Dig a Little Deeper

We defense wonks awoke to find a bombshell Tuesday morning, in the form of a Washington Post investigation by Bob Woodward and Craig Whitlock titled "Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste." All the plot elements are here for a classic Woodward expose: colossal federal waste, bureaucratic cover-up, high-level dissembling, and even overstaffed chow halls.

But on closer inspection, the bombshell appears to be a dud. First, coming from somebody who has been as intimately familiar with government malfeasance for as long as Bob Woodward, shock over runaway Pentagon spending seems akin to griping over the cost of a porterhouse at the Capital Grille -- it’s an outrage, but it comes with the territory. Second, after taking time to do the math and parse the timeline, it seems like there really is a lot less here than meets the eye.