If only our political ‘leaders’ had the integrity to go away for the idiocy and treason that they continually inflict on America.
We should insist on the same values for Congress, even if we have to fire every swinging one.
I am pleased the blame moved up to where it should have been ...at the top. The handling of nuclear weapons should never have been allowed to become so slipshod.
This is just the official excuse. There are a lot of reasons:
1) Interfering with getting Predators and Reapers to the front, because they wanted manned aircraft.
2) The tanker deal. Giving the contract to Northrop/Grumman-EAD instead of Boeing made a heck of a lot of powerful enemies.
3) Other contract disputes, where they were on one side, and the SecDef and the administration were on the other side.
I’m not a Gates fan, but I have to agree it was time to fire the CSAF. The CSAF has focused on the wrong things. The cut of 40,000 (sometimes discussed as 60,000) active duty USAF personnel without a change in the mission was badly done. And if you do the same with a lot less, and drive it on $$ rather than efficiency - you get lower standards.
And while the Predator problem is as much Gates’ fault as the CSAF, it reflects a lack of concern for our current fighting.
For a variety of reasons their leadership elite managed to force through the idea that human assets in foreign countries could be eliminated without risk simply through total reliance on Air Force and CIA spy satellite systems.
That's why we end up not knowing where and when the Iraqis shipped out their WMMD.
I'd suggest the people allowed to resign today probably ought to be recalled to service for later punishment by an Administration interested in holding them accountable for bad intelligence.