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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (51921)	7/24/2004 10:53:48 AM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 89467

Maybe iF we need to upgrade our Nuclear weapons.. the Pak's will provide us with the ..'Right Stuff' Air Force Spends $2.6B on Subpar Planes By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - The Air Force continues to order a new type of cargo plane despite spending $2.6 billion to buy 50 planes that do not meet the military's requirements and cannot be flown in combat zones, Pentagon (news - web sites) investigators said. Contractor Lockheed Martin hasn't delivered any C-130J planes that met requirements in the eight years since the program began, the report said. The Air Force and Lockheed Martin disagree. Problems with the propeller-driven cargo planes include faulty computer and diagnostic systems and inadequate defense measures, the Pentagon's Office of Inspector General concluded. So far, none of the planes has been cleared for some of their primary missions: Dropping troops and cargo into war zones and flying in conditions requiring the crew to wear night-vision goggles. The inspector general's report concluded that Air Force and Defense Department officials mismanaged the program, requiring millions of dollars in upgrades and thousands of hours of work to make the planes capable of performing as well as the aging models they're supposed to replace. The Air Force strongly denied the report's conclusions. Marvin Sambur, the Air Force's top acquisition official, wrote to the investigators that the program is within its cost, schedule and contract guidelines. Lockheed Martin has started delivering planes which meet Air Force specifications and the necessary upgrades have either been completed or scheduled, Sambur wrote. "While some of the facts presented in the DOD/IG report are accurate, the findings and conclusions ascribed to these facts cannot be supported," Sambur wrote in response to the inspector general's office. "The Air Force fully endorses the C-130J program." Lockheed Martin spokesman Jeff Rhodes said Friday the company agrees with the Air Force. "The Air Force, ultimately the end user who is flying the aircraft, also says that the C-130J program is meeting cost, schedule, contract and regulatory commitments," Rhodes said in an e-mail statement. Two Air Force squadrons haven't been able to perform their missions for more than four years because they only have C-130Js, the report said. The 815th Air Squadron at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi and the 135th Airlift Squadron of the Maryland Air National Guard are supposed to drop troops and supplies into hostile areas. Five other Air Force and Marine units have the C-130J planes but use older C-130s to perform their missions, the report said. Air Force testers found so many problems with the planes they stopped evaluations in 2000 so the problems they already found could be fixed, the report said. The report cites problems with the planes including: _Propellers for C-130Js designed for gathering weather data inside hurricanes were damaged in all tests. The weather planes also didn't have radar strong enough to penetrate storms as far as it should. Upgrades to fix those problems mean C-130Js won't be able to fly hurricane missions until at least next year. _Diagnostic systems have a high rate of false positives, meaning maintenance crews spend a lot of time trying to repair components which aren't broken. _The planes did not have an automated system for planning missions. _The C-130Js are so different from older models that pilots qualified to fly older C-130s must be retrained to fly the new ones. The Air Force continues to order more C-130Js despite those problems. The military is buying the planes as a commercial item — a process designed to allow the military to purchase goods on the open market that need few modifications for military use. That process gives the Air Force less oversight and fewer cost controls, the inspector general's report says. For example, the commercial contract means Lockheed Martin doesn't have to give the Air Force data on how much the planes actually cost, so the Air Force has no way to check the company's profit margins. Sambur suggested the inspector general's office was biased against such commercial contracts, an accusation the office denied. The inspector general's office has been among critics of another Air Force plan to retrofit Boeing 767 jets for use as midair refueling planes. ___

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (51921)	7/24/2004 10:57:12 AM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Polls: Kerry Leads Bush in Pa. and Ore. By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites) holds a 10-point lead over President Bush (news - web sites) in Pennsylvania, and a slight lead in Oregon, polls released Friday said. Two new Florida polls found the race deadlocked in a three-way race, suggesting that independent Ralph Nader (news - web sites) again could play a pivotal role in the essential swing state of 2000. Bush won the disputed Florida election by a margin of a few hundred votes, and Democrats blamed Nader, who had more than 97,000 votes, for tipping the balance in the state and awarding Bush the presidency. In Pennsylvania, a key swing state won by Democrat Al Gore (news - web sites) in 2000, Kerry was up over Bush by 48 percent to 38 percent, while Nader was at 5 percent, in a state poll conducted by the Los Angeles Times. In Oregon, Kerry led Bush 50 percent to 42 percent, while Nader had 4 percent, according to a poll by the American Research Group. Gore narrowly won Oregon in 2000. In Florida, a Mason-Dixon poll found Bush at 48 percent, Kerry at 46 percent and Nader at 2 percent. The race was equally close in a Los Angeles Times poll, with Bush at 45 percent, Kerry at 44 percent and 2 percent for Nader. In other competitive states, Kerry and Bush were tied in ARG polls in New Hampshire and Ohio. Bush won both states in 2000. In New Hampshire, Kerry had 47 percent, Bush 45 percent and Nader 3 percent. In Ohio, Kerry and Bush also were deadlocked in a three-way race. Most of the polls had margins of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. Some other details on the poll methods: _The ARG Oregon poll of 600 likely voters was taken July 19-22, and the ARG New Hampshire poll of 600 likely voters was taken July 19-21. The ARG Ohio poll of 600 likely voters was taken July 20-22. _The Mason-Dixon Florida poll of 625 likely voters was taken July 19-21. _The LA Times Florida poll of 401 likely voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points, and the poll of 499 likely voters in Pennsylvania has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. Both were taken between July 17-21.

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (51921)	7/24/2004 10:59:06 AM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Bush's Military Records Fail to Dispel AWOL Charges Fri Jul 23, By Adam Entous WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some of President Bush (news - web sites)'s missing Air National Guard records during the Vietnam War years, previously said to be destroyed, turned up on Friday but offered no new evidence to dispel charges by Democrats that he was absent without leave. His whereabouts during his service as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard in the United States during the Vietnam War have become an election-year issue. Bush's Democratic presidential challenger, John Kerry (news - web sites), is a decorated Vietnam War veteran. The Pentagon (news - web sites), which had announced two weeks ago that the payroll records had been accidentally destroyed, blamed a clerical error for previous failure to find them. In May 1972, Bush moved to Alabama to work on a political campaign and, he has said, to perform his Guard service there for a year. But other Guard officers have said they have no recollection of ever seeing him there. Bush was the son of a U.S. congressman at a time when National Guard service was seen as a way for the privileged to avoid being drafted for Vietnam War duty. Questions over his record resurfaced this year as Bush sought, in the midst of the Iraq (news - web sites) war, to cast himself as a "war president" in his drive to win reelection on Nov. 2. The documents released on Friday by the Pentagon included two faded computerized payroll sheets showing Bush was not paid during the latter part of 1972 and offer no evidence to place Bush in Alabama during the latter part of 1972. Still, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said: "They show the president served in the military and completed his service, which is why he received an honorable discharge." "UNANSWERED QUESTIONS" The Democratic National Committee (news - web sites) called the "supposed discovery" of Bush's payroll records late on Friday -- on the eve of the Democratic National Convention -- "highly questionable." "If the Bush administration continues to search, maybe they'll find answers to the long list of unanswered questions that remain about George W. Bush's time in the Air National Guard. Bush's military records seem to show up as randomly as he did for duty," said DNC spokesman Jano Cabrera. In February, the White House released hundreds of pages of Bush's military records. The White House included a footnote to those earlier records saying that files for the 3rd quarter of 1972 had apparently been lost in microfilm processing. Defense Finance and Accounting Service spokesman Bryan Hubbard said the microfilm payroll records were found in a Denver facility. "We're talking about a manual process for records that are over 30 years old," Hubbard said. He said officials had previously looked in the wrong place for the records relating to the first quarter of 1969 and the third quarter of 1972, and concluded incorrectly that they had been destroyed. Hubbard said that after the Pentagon announced two weeks ago that the records were lost, officials went back to double check, and found an "unlabeled binder" that led them to the right place. The Pentagon had announced on July 9 that microfilm payroll records of large numbers of service members, including Bush, were ruined in 1996 and 1997 in a project to save large, brittle rolls of microfilm.