Pentagon malfeasance sends U.S. jobs abroad


Tribune Staff Writer
The shortsightedness at the Pentagon didn’t end with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
It’s alive and well within the Defense Department currently headed by Robert Gates.
Several days ago the Pentagon outsourced a $35 billion contract to build U.S. Air Force fuel tankers to EADS, European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., the parent company of airplane builder Airbus.
EADS and its partner, Northrop Grumman Corp., a U.S. defense contractor, won the bid over Boeing, which is solely an American airplane builder.
It is the height of arrogance to send taxpayers’ money to create jobs in Europe at a time when U.S. companies are laying off people by the tens of thousands, 63,000 in February alone.
EADS made a promise to build the KC-45, which is scheduled to replace 179 aging Air Force tankers over the next 10-15 years, in Mobile, Ala. But it rolled the first A330, the prototype design for the new line of fuel and cargo planes, off the line in Toulouse, France.
There are reports that four more will be built in France before the switch to Mobile, setting off speculation that once production gets that far in Europe it will stay on that continent because it is believed it will be cheaper than moving the operation to the U.S.
This deal, one of the biggest in years, also comes on the heels of a report that Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton and the biggest contractor in Iraq, set up a shell company in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying taxes on the billions it is making off U.S. forces in the war.
Vice President Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton, the beneficiary of a no-bid contract in Iraq, before joining the Bush ticket in 1999. Cheney still has unexercised stock options and deferred salary with the giant conglomerate, which recently moved its headquarters to Dubai.
Add to that the controversy that GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, as head of the Commerce Committee and the Armed Services subcommittee when the Republicans controlled the U.S. Senate, argued strongly against Boeing during the bidding process.
It seems that McCain, President Bush, Cheney, et al, are more concerned with defense contractors and multinational corporations getting what they want than the welfare of U.S. citizens, including those in uniform in harm’s way.