Perhaps up to 1,000 laptops, of which 400 could be tied to the anti-terrorism program:
It has surfaced that the US State Department can’t account for up to about 1,000 laptops, perhaps as many as 400 of which belonged to the department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program.
The State Department’s Inspector General has been conducting an equipment audit for three months. Only the first stage, an inventory, has been completed.
Internal auditors found that the department lost track of US$30 million worth of computer equipment, “the vast majority of which… perhaps as much as 99 percent,” were laptops, according to one official.
Another official calculated that the average State Department laptop costs US$3,000 and figured that meant as many as 1,000 laptops might be astray – not 10,000 laptops as the US$30 million figure suggests.
First – those are some fucking expensive laptops. Second – where is the accountability George Bush promised us? They had to find this out through an audit and aren’t even sure exactly what is missing? Please let McCain pick Condi as her running mate. Her incompetence writes ads on it’s own.
UPDATE:
An anonymous source has claimed to CQ Politics that the laptops have been found. Not sure how much I buy into that.