Killing the F-22

From today's Washington Post:

He bluntly warned Lockheed Martin that he would slice funding for the more modern F-35 jet if the contracting giant lobbied to build more F-22s. Lockheed Martin's chief executive, Robert J. Stevens, told employees he supported Gates's call "to put the interests of the United States first -- above the interests of agencies, services and contractors." That left the powerful lobbyists to sit on their hands.

I highly recommend this article on how the Obama Administration -- and Sens. McCain and Levin -- killed the F-22 program. While I was away in Afghanistan, I read the text of Sec. Gates's speech in Chicago and his comments to the press afterwards regarding the F-22. I had no idea the speech and his comments were so coldly calculated and part of a larger, well-organized effort to undermine support for the F-22. Silly me.

Also in the Post today, my boss has an excellent review of a new biography of Donald Rumsfeld. Within the halls of 1301 Pennsylvania Avenue, I take it upon myself to be the one to make the most merciless fun of Nate and John, but one has to give credit where credit is due, and Nate's review is really quite good:

During the summer of 2003, a squall of snowflakes and counter-snowflakes blew through the offices of Rumsfeld and Gen. John Abizaid, the newly appointed head of U.S. Central Command, about the definitions of "insurgent" and "guerrilla warfare." Rumsfeld, over Abizaid's objections, resisted acknowledging the enemy in Iraq as an organized force because doing so would have suggested that the U.S. presence there was likely to be long and costly. But his denial merely delayed the inevitable, and, as in a real snowstorm, the cleanup began only after the last flake fell.