Tough-guy Donald Rumsfeld has backed down to whiny members of Congress and the back-room dealings of defense contractors who stand to gain billions of dollars by keeping the C-130J assembly line open. It’s too bad, because the interests of the taxpayers and the military have been ignored.
The bottom line is that the C-130J, a problem-plagued transport aircraft, is back in the defense authorization budget after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a May 10 memo that “new information” had become available. “While the decision during the Department’s fiscal year (FY) 2006 budget process was based on information available at the time, new information has become available regarding the contract termination costs,” Rumsfeld wrote to Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner. There was no explanation of what the “new” information was, but it’s obvious. Members of Congress have been wildly inflating the termination costs, with some manufactured estimates as high as $2 billion. The contract clearly limits the termination cost to $383 million.
Earlier the Pentagon green shades had estimated that canceling the C-130J program would save the taxpayers $5 billion and end the production of a lemon-of-an-aircraft. Looks like another flip-flop story ripped right from the pages of a political science textbook. The Pentagon threatens to cancel a weapons system, Congress goes on the attack as cheerleaders for a contractor, and the Pentagon relents.
The Pentagon is wasting billions of dollars in taxes?
This is an example of the disasters for the nation's public purse when foreign policy gets muddled. Foreign policy should lead economic and defence policies; in fact, on the international scene, NATO is now looking for political coherence to support its military adventures.
Anyway, at present, key US policies are said to be in separate lanes. It is recommended that the Pentagon draws up a new map.
"Separate lanes are something the China hawks in the Pentagon love because it allows them to cast China solely as "near peer" and ignore the growing interdependency of our two economies. Yes, to be a "realist" today is to argue for both war and a lowering of global economic growth, because if we all get rich we'll have to fight over that ever increasing pie, right?. . . America may need China economically, but the Big War crowd in the Pentagon need it desperately more for their planning "requirements". http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/
Posted by: IJ | May 23, 2005 at 06:37 AM