Let's say you ask somebody a question. They give you an answer you don't like, so you pretend you didn't hear it. Probably all of us would cop to something like this at some time in our imperfect pasts. For most of us though, that pretending hasn't included trying to hide $125 billion. The Pentagon has a little image problem: Google "Pentagon waste" and you get more than 500,000 hits, including stories about $600 toilet seats and $7,600 coffee makers. The finances of the largest agency in the federal government are so screwed up, it's the only one that still can't pass an audit. So a couple of years ago the Pentagon paid some consultants to find ways to cut down on this waste. If some good ideas came out of this, Pentagon officials figured, they could show how concerned with efficiency they were and apply the savings to their wish lists of pet military projects. It didn't turn out quite that way. In three months the Pentagon brass had on their desks a report outlining $125 billion in