It’s a long running joke in the military that the Air Force gets the best of everything, from the cushiest rooms, to the highest level of electronic gadgets to play with- both job related, and r&r based.  It’s usually a topic that’s discussed in jest with only mild (if any) contempt carried through the thread by the ones making the wisecracks.

However, with a new project that the Air Force has in play, the Airmen themselves are turning on the hands that feed them, because the brass doesn’t think things are quite comfortable enough for them when they travel.  So they’re spending approximately $20 Million to upgrade their seating arrangements in something they’re calling Senior Leader In-transit Comfort Capsules or SLICCs.  Though in many of the pages discussing the SLICCs the word “Comfort” has been crossed out and replaced with “Conference”, in an effort to downplay the requested extravagances. 

The SLICCs are being equipped with 4 swivelling recliners with personal lamps (the recliners were originally brown, but were reupholstered to a nice “Air Force blue” to the tune of $68,240), a large wooden desk (more money spent to darken the color of the wood of which the table was constructed), beds, a couch, another table, a 37 inch flat screen TV with stereo speakers (what?  thought surround sound would be too much?) and a full length mirror.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but I remember being crammed into a civilian aircraft with multiple other units along with our armor, our gear, and our weapons, into standard seating and flying from the U.S. to Europe, then from Europe to Kuwait, and then moved out into a cargo plane with folded down bench seating and harnesses sitting in the same compartment as pallets of equipment for our flights to and around Iraq.  I’m not suggesting everyone fly in such a manor, but all things considered I think the “luxury aircraft” in which the senior leadership in the Air Force already travel is more than sufficient given the alternatives. 

Oh, it should also be noted that there are no additions of communication improvements or other work related additions to the SLICCs (unless you count a single desk as all you need).

Luckily Congress is in agreement and is doing all they can to slow the draw of funds by the project from the GWOT (Global War on Terror, because when I think war on terror, I’m thinking leather recliners and flatscreen TVs) pot. 

The project is already underway, with at least one SLICC well into construction.  So next time you meet a General from the Air Force, make sure you ask them about their flight.

More information about the SLICC, including pictures, can be found here.

Popularity: 2% [?]

On Thursday the House shocked everyone- including itself, with it’s votes on a 3-part war funding bill.

The surprise action left antiwar activists on and off Capitol Hill exultant, Republicans gloating and Democratic leaders baffled. Recriminations from all sides quickly followed.

House leaders had broken the war funding bill into three separate measures. The first, to continue funding combat operations, needed Republican votes to pass over the objection of antiwar Democrats. The second would impose strict Iraq-related policy measures strongly opposed by President Bush, and the third would fund domestic priorities, including a new G.I. Bill and levees around New Orleans.

That legislative legerdemain became the plan’s undoing. Rather than go along, 131 House Republicans voted “present” on the war funding provision, saying they were incensed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and a few of her lieutenants had drafted the bill in secret, then expected them to play along.

Reps say their action is a boycott of shady Dem dealings, Dems say the Reps had a choice between funding the war, or not funding it, and they chose to wash their hands of it altogether.

(T)he impact is likely to be short-lived. The Senate will take up its version of the war funding bill next week; it is expected to restore the war funds and strip out the policy prescriptions most disagreeable to the White House. The White House reiterated its veto threat of the overall package yesterday morning, demanding a new version stripped of policy prescriptions and domestic spending, including the bill’s $52 billion expansion of veterans’ education benefits. The supplemental appropriations vote is the last major clash on Iraq policy between Congress and Bush.

Had it become law, the House bill would have brought the total cost of the war in Iraq to around $660 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service, more expensive than any U.S. military effort except World War II.

As passed, the House bill would require troop withdrawals from Iraq to begin within 30 days, with a goal of removing all combat forces by December 2009. The Iraqi government would have to match U.S. reconstruction funding dollar for dollar, and would be required to offer the U.S. military the same fuel subsidies it provides its own citizens.

Basically as it stands, rather than continue to flush money in a situation that taxes our country’s resources and money more than we can afford, this bill will improve scholastic options for troops who have served, begin bringing the troops home as well as giving them more time off inbetween deployments to recouperate, and make the Iraqi gov’t begin to pull it’s actual fair share of the load. Sounds pretty reasonable to me, but of course reasonable dealings have never been the current admin’s strong point, as evidenced by the fact that the White House has promised to veto this thing to death should it even reach their door.

And while the improvement of educational benefits to the troops sounds like something anyone, regardless of political affiliation could get behind- leave it to Prez hopeful John McCain to try to use it as a tool for keeping the troops in the military (which in turn makes it all the more difficult to use the benefits to get to college, because, you know- deployments tend to make it hard to get to get to class on time).

The measure has attracted broad bipartisan support, but it is opposed by Bush because of its cost, its tax increase and fears that its generosity could entice service members to leave the military rather than reenlist at the end of their tours. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican nominee, has put forward a less generous alternative that would save its richest benefits for service members doing multiple tours.

But McCain’s efforts have run into bipartisan opposition — from lawmakers, veterans organizations and educators. Former homeland security secretary Tom Ridge, a close McCain ally, came out for Webb’s measure yesterday.

“I have tremendous regard for Senator McCain, but I can’t figure out where he is right now,” said Dartmouth College President James Wright, a former Marine who helped negotiate the Webb-Warner language. “It seems to me our posture as a nation cannot be to say to servicemen and -women, ‘We do not value you unless you reenlist.’ That wasn’t the contract they signed.”

But no matter what happened in the House, expect the Senate to sink the whole thing and bring it right back to war spending where this gov’t seems to think it belongs.

Popularity: 4% [?]