Air Force Buys French Tanker
“There had been doubts as to whether the Air Force, and Congress, would award such a massive contract to a French firm, but a thaw in relations following the election of Nicolas Sarkozy may have eased concerns. Also Northrop claims that its aircraft will create 25,000 American jobs.”
Source : The Weekly Standard
Hello,
I just read your post in Charles Bremner‘s weblog and am pleased to read someone “defend” the French. Thank you.
My post in the Eurotrib seems to have caught quite a stir among Bremner’s fans in his weblog!
By the way, this French tanker business is good news!
Here’s an excerpt from something I wrote in my Eurotrib diary: Modernising the British Army radically. I wrote the post as a comment to The First Post UK’s defence expert Robert Fox’s radical plan on how to modernise the (British) Army; he believes that one of the solutions is to copycat the French Foreign Legion (heh!)
I don’t recall ever posting over at Charles Bremner’s weblog. The comment I saw mentioning the site is likely a spoof. Thanks for the input !
I never thought this was possible BUT Democrats are acting just as bad as Republicans. (from an AP article)
“Having made sure that Iraq gets new schools, roads, bridges and dams that we deny America, now we are making sure that France gets the jobs that Americans used to have,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill. “We are sending the jobs overseas, all because John McCain demanded it.”
McCain called such criticism off base.
“In all due respect to the Washington delegation, they vigorously defended the process before — which turned out to be corrupt — which would have cost the taxpayers more than $6 billion and ended up with people in federal prison,” he said. “I’m the one that fought against that … for years and brought down a corrupt contract.”
Keith Ashdown, with the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Boeing executives who broke the law were to blame for the demise of the tanker contract — not McCain.
An interesting article from Washington Post by Steven Pearlstein. Includes this silly rant:
“We should not be beholden to the French for parts and maintenance for the defense of our nation,” roared Sam Brownback, a Republican senator from Kansas, where Boeing, not coincidentally, has a big plant, “and we should not require our military personnel to learn to speak French to be able to operate our refueling tankers.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/06/AR2008030603752.html
So what if the military personnel has to learn French?, i had to learn English, no big deal. It’s just a problem of national pride!, America needs to yield & will have to do more of it with the rise of other nations, especially China!. The US is like a child , having a temper tantrum over a deal that went sour or went to someone else for a change!. I do understand how the US feels but sometimes its way of overreacting can be silly. Thank god all Americans don’t react that way!!