[Paul Ross]

All right! Go Rummy! It figures that the self-serving scrambled-egg bunch will complain about the loss of their gravy-train!

[Paul Ross]

Ping

[mewzilla]

The main fear is that France will win military export contracts because it will have a monopoly on flight demonstrations at the Paris air show.

"One can't help notice that the Russians and French are very good at making ejector seats," quipped one defense official.

Bwah hah hah hah hah.

[MeekMom]

Why would there even be a peep from the scrambled egg bunch? Why are we even going, period?
No American has any business going to France whatsoever!

[Grampa Dave]

It should be easy to identify these Clintoonian holdovers and give them an early discharge. Then they can go to work for France or Russia hawking their great military equipment.

The decision to limit appearances of aircraft and uniformed brass at Paris is not going over well inside the U.S. defense industry. Some top-level officers who expect to retire to industry jobs are openly grumbling that Rumsfeld's decision will hurt the U.S. defense industry.

[dark_lord]

For example, Poland just closed a deal with the U.S. to purchase 48 F-16 Falcon jet fighters in a deal reported to be worth over $3.5 billion.

On the other hand, as I recall, we the US people are loaning the Poles the $3.5B to buy these planes. Plus part of the deal was to build factories in Poland to make parts for the planes. Past experience demonstrates that once the loan comes due it will be "rolled over" or at least partially written off. So I guess it is better than no deal at all, but it is definately not as good as it would be if they were paying for it out of their pockets instead of we US citizens paying for it out of our pockets.

[kitkat]

BUMP

[taxed2death]

Rummy should really put his money where his mouth is and not do business with the French company that supplies food for the troops (Sedexo, I'm not sure how to spell it?) the contract is worth tens of millions a year.

[Tailgunner Joe]

bttt