Demagogue

Today's Washington Post details how a certain GOP-supporting flailing company got a $30 billion dollar government contract may be may have been, er, helped along by some people in the government, even possibly the White House.

The inspector general's report, slated for release today at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, adds a new dimension to what Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) have already called one of the most significant military contracting abuses in several decades. Already, the scandal has resulted in prison terms for former Air Force principal deputy assistant secretary Darlene A. Druyun, and a senior Boeing official, Michael M. Sears.
...
After interviewing 88 people and reading hundreds of thousands of pages of e-mails, the inspector general's office concluded that four top Air Force officials and one of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's former top aides, Undersecretary of Defense Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge, violated Pentagon and government-wide procurement rules, failed to use "best business practices," ignored a legal requirement for weapons testing and failed to ensure that the tankers would meet the military's requirements.

But here is the real kicker...

In the copy of the report obtained by The Washington Post, 45 sections were deleted by the White House counsel's office to obscure what several sources described as references to White House involvement in the lease negotiations and its interaction with Boeing."

I'm sure those redacted parts are all vital to the war on terrorism.

I'd have to be painfully naive to believe that this should-be scandal will amount to anything more than blog fodder. Then again, if I truly didn't have any hope that things could get better I wouldn't blog at all.