The biggest US domestic news you didn’t hear last week was that the Pentagon has decided to pour $50 billion — maybe 20% of the money needed to rebuild New Orleans — down a rat hole. Having already spent $19 billion over twenty years to build a prototype that doesn’t work, the Pentagon is planning to start “full rate production” of the Opsrey V-22 tilt rotor aircarft. Unofficial estimated cost of the 458 craft planned? $100 million each, for a total just under $50 billion — plus inflation, cost-overruns, and the usual.
And the @#$$#@ of it is, the V-22 doesn’t work—if exposed to dirt. I’m told, however, that dirt is sometimes found in the places one might want to land it.
Adding insult to injury, the contractors ran an offensive anti-Muslim ad promoting the V-22, which incidentally shows an artist’s conception of the plane doing what it was originally intended to do, but can’t.
The good folks at the Project on Government Oversight are all over it at the POGO Blog.
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Seems to me that it is perfectly plausible that Bush did not ask her about her personal views. She was part of his staff: he did not give a rat’s patootie about her personal views. Would you ask your cat its opinion on abortion? Or, come to think of it, on sterilization?
Doesn’t work if exposed to dirt- maybe they should team it up w/ the B-2, which doesn’t work in the rain. Then mud will be our worst enemy of all.