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It must be nice to be a defense contractor. Take Sioux Manufacturing of Fort Totten, North Dakota. They make helmets for the Pentagon. Seems like they shortchanged the armor in 2.2 million helmets including those issued to troops sent to Afghanistan and to both wars in Iraq. I don’t know what the Pentagon paid for these helmets but you can buy one on-line for about $200. The company and the Department of Justice reached an agreement and settled for a $2 million fine, about a buck a helmet. Then the Pentagon gave them a $74 million contract to replace the old stuff with new stuff.
Hmmm, when I was a mechanic and I screwed up the repair was free. While I was in electronics sales if a product failed it was repaired or replaced for free. If you’re a defense contractor and your product may have killed or injured soldiers (we don’t know because the Pentagon doesn’t release those figures) you get an itty-bitty fine and a new contract. Sweeeet!
Not to worry though ‘cause Bush’s new defense budget is now the largest since WWII. $518 Billion, half of all discretionary spending, and that doesn’t include the cost of fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (about a $ trillion spread over the life of the wars). It doesn’t include replacing all the National Guard stuff that got blown up in Iraq. It doesn’t include the cost of treating returning vets with various and sundry body parts left in some dusty street half way ‘round the world.
All this and we still can’t win a war in a country that doesn’t have an army.
No place but America . . .
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