Sen. Craig Clears Air Force Promotions

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49302-2003Jun12.html ^ | 06/12/03 | ROBERT GEHRKE

[bedolido]

WASHINGTON - Idaho Sen. Larry Craig cleared the way for the Senate to approve the promotions of 127 Air Force captains and majors, but will continue to stall promotions of higher-ranking officers in a showdown over planes for the Air National Guard in his state.

Relenting to requests from the White House, Craig's staff processed paperwork releasing the 127 nominees Wednesday night and they were scheduled for a Senate vote Thursday, said Will Hart, a spokesman for the Idaho Republican.

[Lucy Lake]

Ping.

[Drango]

Instead of being a major league Clymer, he's now just a Clymer.

Listen up Craig, you POS, don't take out you pet-peeves over pork on the men and women of the military.

[Paul Atreides]

Is Craig a Rhino?

[Drango]

Is Craig a Rhino?

Nope...very conservative. Just wrong on this.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

What the hell is the matter with Craig? We got enough RINOs and RATs to deal with without a conservative stabbing us in the back.

[Mo1]

Listen up Craig, you POS, don't take out you pet-peeves over pork on the men and women of the military.

Agreed!

[Myrddin]

The Air Force has promised a full squadron of C-130 aircraft at the Air National Guard facility in Idaho for the last 7 years. The Air Force has not delivered. Idaho spent big bucks to upgrade the facilities. Craig is playing hardball in a way that is common for a U.S. Senator. The Air Force and press decided to crucify him for a common legislative tactic.

[OldFriend]

Uh, between seven years ago and now, we have a new President, Secretary of Defense, and one other little detail.........WE ARE AT WAR........

A little thing like September 11, 2001 slip his mind?

[bedolido]

If Craig didn't mess Idaho up by this... we still may get the F22 stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base. That'll bring over 6,000 jobs and $35,000,000 a year. Much needed during these hard financial times.

[jriemer]

Buried in the article is this gem:

"Senator Craig is still reserving his right on the rest of these holds until we are able to come to a conclusion," Hart (Ed.: a spokesman for the Idaho Republican) said.

Hart said holds remain in place on 85 colonels and generals, including Maj. Gen. John W. Rosa Jr., who was picked to lead the Air Force Academy, which has been marred by a rape scandal in recent months

This ain't over by a long shot.

[af_vet_rr]

Listen up Craig, you POS, don't take out you pet-peeves over pork on the men and women of the military.

Amen, they did nothing to deserve him screwing with their careers. He has a beef, and legitimate or not, he has no right to take it out on them. They had nothing to do with it and no control over it.

Craig is disgusting.

[bedolido]

Craig is disgusting

unfortunately... I'm beginning to agree. Craig is my senator and I worked for his re-election last year. He was wrong on this and it may come back to bite him...

[Paul Atreides]

That stinks.

[El Gato]

Amen, they did nothing to deserve him screwing with their careers

It won't. They'll like get their date of rank back dated and get back pay too. The numbers seem awfully small for a Captains and Majors list. Maybe a non-line list? (i.e. nurses, biomedical service corps, medical or chaplins or some combination thereof?)

[Myrddin]

If Craig didn't mess Idaho up by this... we still may get the F22 stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base. That'll bring over 6,000 jobs and $35,000,000 a year. Much needed during these hard financial times.

That would be a nice catch for state tax revenues. It doesn't mean much economically to those of us out in southeast Idaho. The stupid Democrats that run city hall in Pocatello and Idaho Falls are killing existing and future business activity with high taxes. The voters sent a bunch of Democrats to the legislature too. We are essentially without representation in the state house as a consequence.

[Coop]

Craig finally backed off.

[Drango]

Gulp, this is hard to say but I agree with much of the NY Slime editorial...http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/11/opinion/11WED1.html?ex=1055995200&en=27693ac39f15e2a5&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

---

Larry Craig's Air Force Antics

ow and then a member of the House or Senate will do something so obnoxious that it calls the country's attention to one of the more repugnant aspects of Congress's normal operating procedures. Now it is Senator Larry Craig, a conservative Idaho Republican who advertises himself as a strong supporter of America's military. For the past month he has frozen hundreds of Air Force promotions, including those of pilots who risked their lives over Iraq, to bludgeon the Pentagon into transferring four additional C-130 transport planes to an Air National Guard base in Boise.

Senator Craig may set a new record for skewed priorities — even the Idaho Air National Guard is trying to distance itself from his little crusade. But his narrow-minded approach to military matters is disturbingly common on Capitol Hill. Congressional pressure to relocate military hardware, keep open unneeded bases and pad orders for local defense plants continually bloats the military budget. The Pentagon is directed to purchase items it never requested, and its efforts to cut obsolete and expensive weapons programs are regularly thwarted. This helps explain why America spends some $400 billion a year on the military and still underfinances promising new weapons systems like unmanned reconnaissance and combat aircraft.

Few customs are as entrenched in Washington as seeking Pentagon contracts to score political points at home. Trent Lott got the shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., a contract for a $1.5 billion helicopter carrier the Navy had not even sought. John Warner, the Republican who is now the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, looks out for the Northrop Grumman Newport News shipyard in Virginia, which continues to build attack submarines, weapons that lost much of their military rationale with the end of the cold war.

Democrats have been as eager as Republicans to lobby for home state contractors. One of the most flagrant current examples of distorted spending is a costly leasing deal for aerial tankers backed by Representative Norm Dicks of Washington. Leasing the craft instead of buying them helps the state's financially ailing Boeing Company but will ultimately cost the taxpayer billions. While the Air Force's wrongheaded F-22 fighter program is now rightly being questioned, actually pulling the plug on the project could be impossible as long as it is defended by Georgia's senators, Saxby Chambliss, a Republican, and Zell Miller, a Democrat. Much of the work on the plane is done by Lockheed Martin in Georgia.

America's defense dollars would go further if more legislators showed themselves true friends of the American military by joining military reformers like Senators John McCain and Charles Grassley and others working to pry apart the iron triangle of services, defense contractors and parochial members of Congress that lards each year's military budget with billions of dollars of wasteful pork.

[cubreporter]

Yes, I suggest holding up his raises or his bennies he gets all the time. Free this and free that. How dare he? He has no right to hold up anyone's promotion over soemthng that has nothing to do with them. I will remember this Clymer's name as one of our posters said earlier. He's a Clymer and a BIG one at tht. He should be ashamed after this Iraqi war to even think about something like this. Shame, on this lowly person. Shame on him. Lower ranks, higher ranks...it is THEIR promotion. I will remember his name and hope other military people do too...I dont care if he is a pubbie or a dem. It's wrong what he tried to do and we won't soon forget it!