McCain on defensive over Air Force tanker contract

[kevinmc]

WASHINGTON: John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is fending off charges that he pushed the U.S. Air Force into a faulty $35 billion deal for midair refueling planes.

Democrats weighed in after the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, found last week that the air force had made "significant errors that could have affected the outcome of what was a close competition" between Boeing and a combination of Northrop Grumman and European Aerospace & Defense Systems, or EADS, which was awarded the contract.

The Democratic National Committee accused McCain of "mimicking" EADS, the corporate parent of Airbus, Boeing's rival, "every step of the way" in shaping the competition for the contract.

"In reality, Senator McCain intervened at key steps in the process, echoing the arguments of the EADS/Airbus consortium each time," the Democratic Party headquarters said.

The senator from Arizona, it asserted in a follow-up statement, "helped steer a tanker contract to a European company for which seven of his campaign advisers and fund-raisers then lobbied.".........

[NJmaverick]

1. Now this is a good issue. It's an issue of substance and goes

to the heart of the kind of politician one is getting if one is foolish enough to vote for McCain.