The following is from Hakki.
Joanna
Swatch won't sell Boeing the crystals for JDAM GPS bomb guidance systems. Michelin is working overtime to produce Hummer and aircraft tires for the US war machine but can't keep up (or won't?). The M1A's stranded with shot transmissions and crapped-out tracks, turning heavy armored units into junkyards, have Rheinmetall gun barrels and GIAT firing mechanisms. Israel's war industries have become so enmeshed with Boeing and Northrop-Grumman that it's impossible to say where IAI ends and Boeing/Northrop begins (although it's perfectly clear where Boeing/Northrop ends, since the Israelis will break the legs of any American venturing into restricted territory). It would be great if Greenspan could give a pep talk about how "making stuff" is uncool to the grunts in Iraq who'll soon have to rent Iraqi pickups to go out and get blown up, since their Hummers' tires will be worn down to the metal.
This is one horny dilemma for Rummy. As Boeing's top sales rep, he has to keep the Joint Strike Fighter ball rolling but since Boeing is merely assembling foreign-made components, he has to shoot down the "buy Amurrukun" bill. He hates Germany and France, but can't make war without their hardware. He was doing so great producing conceptual wars, smiting the Iraqis with stupendous new Wunderwaffenen, and now it's the Tet offensive all over again, the polls look awful, Arnie is up the creek in California, and the specter of Watergate sits at the White House prayer meeting every morning like Hamlet's ghost.
Buy American? http://www.wotv.com/index.php?goto=story&RecordID=2613 Washington, D.C., updated July 25, 2003, 8:43 am
Congressman Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, says countries that failed to help the United States in Iraq should not receive U.S. Military contracts.
During the war with Iraq, a Swiss manufacturer that makes a key component of the Joint Direct Attack Munition - JDAM- stopped sending shipments to the US because the company opposed the war.
The US military ultimately turned to an American company for the JDAM component.
Right now half of every military aircraft and weapons system has to be built with US parts.
Under Representative Duncan Hunter's Buy America proposal 65% would come from domestic suppliers.
"Having a buy American law ensures that us tax dollars go to support us tax jobs. We don't need to support European defense jobs," says Scott Paul of AFL-CIO.
The General Accounting Office, Congress's research office, is also urging the Pentagon to give more contracts to US manufacturers.
The GAO warned in a report this week that the US is losing control over sensitive technology in the $200 billion joint strike fighter program, the Pentagon's largest aircraft project that's being developed with US allies, but the Pentagon says to restructure just the Joint Strike fighter program to favor American businesses would cost taxpayers an additional $4 billion.
$500 million extra would have to be spent by Lockheed to implement just the reporting requirements on this program and that's quite the burden on the taxpayers.
Defense contractors also oppose the Buy America plan, arguing it risks alienating US allies. According to the industry - it's a two way street - if the US stops buying military goods from other countries, other countries may stop buying from the US.
This could be the single biggest destructive blow to the American Alliances that the President is trying to build around the world that we've seen probably in 30 to 40 years.
The Pentagon feels so strongly on this issue that if the Buy American provision is in the final Appropriations bill - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will ask the President to veto the entire $400 billion bill.