The Brass Monkey is wondering what all the fuss is about concerning the Air Force's decision to give the new tanker contract to EADS, a European company.

The folks who say that outsourcing the contract to a non US company is outrageous and that Boeing should have got the contract. Let's be real folks Boeing is here pretty much in name and final assembly only. Don't forget that Boeing's new passenger plane supposed to debut in August of '07 is way behind schedule. The reason, Boeing OUTSOURCED the manufacture of the various parts of the plane to several foreign manufactures, and only the final assembly was going to be done in the US. The parts to be assembled came back from the various sources and guess what, they did not fit together!

Pretty much the same thing was going to be done by EADS who would be using various sub-contractors like, GE and Northrop Grumman. The final assembly would be done in here in the good ole US.

So what's the big deal?

If Boeing was going construct the whole tanker here and could truly say, made in the USA (totally and not just assembled) that despite the higher bid, it should have been excepted. Then a lot of Americans would have some badly needed good paying jobs.

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