But who knows?

What if the USAF receives nothing but a giant sack of Freedom Fries on delivery day? What then?

There are various bad-case scenarios in any contract awarded.

What if Boeing got mad at GAO or the Air-Force in a payment or other
dispute and refused to continue work on the tankers. Or refused to
deliver the finished goods?

Besides this case is markedly different from the American government
refusing to ship to Iran after the Shah was deposed. All parties
involved in manufacturing and delivery of the tanker are privately
held companies. The Air Force is the recipient.

I’ll send her a list of
the major companies who not only outsource from America
but also have the guts to move chunks of their operations
overseas and still enjoy many of the benefits offered American
companies.

As for McCain and the previous deals, there is the Sherman
Anti-Trust Act we have to abide by here and having one source
for the tankers with no bidding is not only in violation
of that act, it’s a disservice to the American public to not
be given the opportunity to have the best product available.
Even a kindergarten class can point to the pictures and say,
“Look, that tanker is much bigger. That means it holds more
fuel!”

The best thing they can do is accept the decision once it’s rendered
and get on with other issues of which there are plenty. I don’t see them
eating up a lot of time over this.

Boeing blame game is played on Sen. McCain
By Roxana Tiron
Posted: 03/06/08 07:40 PM [ET]

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/boeing-blame-game-is-played-2008-03-06.html

[snip]

Several high-ranking House Democrats have charged that McCain is partly to blame for the Air Force’s surprise decision last week to award a contract worth as much as $40 billion to a team that includes Northrop Grumman and EADS, the parent company of Airbus.

They argue that McCain should not have pushed for a new bidding process five years ago that opened Boeing up to competition from Airbus after a deal in which Boeing would have leased tankers to the Air Force fell apart amid corruption charges. The unraveling of that deal led to the competition won by the U.S.-European partnership last week.

“He could have reformed the contract that Boeing got rather than reopening it and sending the jobs to France,” said a critical Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

[snip]

That hasn’t stopped Democrats from trying to capitalize on an opportunity to attack McCain and play tough on his signature issue of national security. They argue that by awarding the contract to a consortium that includes Airbus, the Air Force is endangering the U.S. defense industrial base.

“We will not have the industrial and technological base necessary to ensure our national security because it will fade, it will diminish, it is not strengthened,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters this week.

While Pelosi refrained from blaming McCain, she said that because McCain intervened in the Air Force’s dealings, “we have a situation … where this work may be outsourced.”

It’s really a non-partisan issue,
with Republicans and Democrats on both sides.

In the end it will all come down to a lot of wasted taxpayer
time and money and the Air Force getting exactly what they
wanted and awarded in the beginning.

If Nancy makes a big deal out of it I’ll remind her I knew
her when she and Dianne Feinstein were mere supervisors
in San Francisco but I’m back in Mobile so back down
or I’ll turn-coat and launch an anti-Obama backlash
that will likely cost them the presidency and a few seats
in both chambers.

If the bureaucrats at the GAO decide against Boeing, there would be enough momentum in Congress to strip the funding.