Sparks: Iran war has led to US munitions shortfalls, Pentagon inspector confirms

Words about limitless stockpiles are the decoration; the empty magazine racks are the record, and nations that go to war on their speeches about power generally discover that power was counted, not proclaimed.

Consider the mechanism: each missile drawn from inventory is a variable consumed, and the operation cannot run indefinitely unless the resupply subroutine executes - declare the loop endless and the machine still stops when the store is spent.

The official said limitless, the ledger said otherwise, and the punishment falls not on the man who lied but on the inspector who counted - every hierarchy burns the mathematician before it amends the arithmetic.

The arsenals of Trajan are dust, and so will these be; do what the shortage reveals needs doing - speak plainly, count honestly, spend carefully - for the empire that flatters itself about its stores feeds on a fiction.

Set aside the dispute between 'virtually limitless' and 'severely constrained' and ask the cash-value question: what does a quartermaster actually hand a pilot on Tuesday morning, and does the tally match the speech?

No curse depletes an armory and no boast refills it; every missile is so many atoms of steel and powder, drawn down at one rate and forged at another, and wonder arrives only when you count both.

If the supply is limitless, the inspector's finding is false; if the inspector's finding is true, the supply is not limitless; a nation cannot be taxed by its enemies and beggared by its own bookkeeping and survive the second loss.

Hateful: a leader who says 'virtually limitless' about anything he has not personally counted. Elegant: an inspector who counts, publishes the number, and lets the difference speak for itself.

Walk the depot floor and the official account dissolves: pallets unbuilt, lead times doubled, clerks who know the count and cannot say it - the spokesmen describe the institution; the shelves describe the truth.

A power that demands endless sacrifice for endless war while its own stockpiles run short, and answers the shortfall not with honesty but with the phrase 'virtually limitless,' has proven which currency it truly deals in: the credulity of its people.

Never start a journey without counting what you carry; the pilot who trusts the brochure instead of the manifest runs out north of the river, and the people depending on him do not get to walk back.

Nothing in the traveller's experience instructs so firmly as the gap between the guidebook and the road: the brochure promised inexhaustible provisions, the innkeeper counted out the last of the grain, and only the count could be trusted.