marine one helicopter scandal?
Who knew?
Via War and Piece comes a Huffington Post article about some apparent hanky-panky surrounding the awarding of a contract to build 28 new Presidential helicopters to an Italian aerospace firm:
“Obama Confronts a Choice on Copters” read this week’s New York Times . The President soon “will have to decide whether to proceed with some of the priciest aircraft in the world — a new fleet of 28 Marine One helicopters that will each cost more than the last Air Force One….The choice confronting Mr. Obama encapsulates the tension between two imperatives of his nascent presidency, the need to meet the continuing threats of an age of terrorism and the demand for austerity in a period of economic hardship.”
This is a gross misrepresentation of the choice Obama faces. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn) and others have alleged that the contract for 28 Marine One helicopters was awarded to the Italian firm Finmeccanica as a thank you for Italy’s participation in the Iraq War. The evidence, however, indicates that the contract was more specifically a payoff to the Italian government for supplying the forged documents showing Saddam had obtained weapons grade uranium from Niger. President Bush famously used this fraudulent “yellowcake” intelligence to justify launching the war.
Um, wow. First of all… 28? Second… One helicopter costs more than Clinton’s Air Force One? Really nice, and I mean really nice civilian helicopters cost between $10 and $15 million. The famous UH-60 Blackhawk “only” costs around $6 million, and the decked-out Apache gunship costs around $18 million. I’m either suprised that Air Force One cost less than that, or that we’re spending $400 million for a single chopper. Not sure which is worse. Third… We apparently spent less than a million on the new Presidential limousines, and that bought us 3 of ‘em.
I really hope I’m not the last person to write about this.
Leave a Reply