Off we go, into the styled blue yonder ...

| The New Mexican

7/18/2008 - 7/19/08

Lest the taxpaying American public — and you know who you are, and aren't — wonder how well its dollars are being applied to the president's war against terrorism, we should take, well, comfort, from a report yesterday in The Washington Post.

Some of the Air Force's top brass have been applying their smarts, and our nation's money, to the creation of "comfort capsules." These are structures that can be slipped in and out of military planes, so that, when those craft are carrying generals, fat-cat contractors, Cabinet members, senators and such, the passengers are properly pampered.

Work is well under way on the first 9-by-18-foot capsule.

The Post, thanks to the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, got hold of documents spelling out how each of the capsules is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule" — with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror.

Well of course: the ilustres, and whoever else might be along for the ride, must look their best before deplaning, must they not?

An officer of the Air Mobility Command, it turns out, was asked by a general "what it would take to make the (capsule) ... a 'world class' piece of equipment." Seems he got it in his brass-bedecked head that existing seats on transport planes — seats like those suffered by the flying public — might be fine for enlisted men and women, but not nearly nice enough for high-ranking officers. "World class," repeated one of the uniformed bosses; he wouldn't settle for anything less.

This might read like a scene from Joseph Heller's classic novel Catch-22 — which these real-life versions of Generals Dreedle and Peckham apparently never got around to reading. If they had, they would never have allowed themselves to be caught behaving with such arrogance.

At any rate, a general's wish was a colonel's command; the project gained takeoff velocity. Soon $16 million was dedicated to it, and it quickly spun six-figure overruns and change orders like one for Air Force blue instead of brown leather seats, which alone cost nearly $70,000.

The Air Force already had a couple of trailers, known as "Silver Bullets," which it loads onto large transports for use by top military and civilian officers — and, of course, a fleet of about 100 planes specifically meant for VIP travel. Yes, but the events of Sept. 11, 2001, exposed a gap in our military's luxury offerings ...

Waitaminute — what does any of this have to do with 9/11 and terrorism?

We're glad you asked. Our high-ranking warriors want the money to come out of counterterrorism funds.

But that darn John Murtha, the Pennsylvania congressman, an ex-Marine who served in Vietnam, kept putting the kibosh on the terror-budget trick, so the project — one capsule built, nine to go — would be coming out of more vague funds allotted to the military. But the bookkeeping wars raged on.

This is the work of the same Pentagon chronically incapable of supplying body armor to our troops, and blastproofing for soldiers' vehicles so often attacked by — yes! — terrorists.

When word first got out about this extravagance, the Air Force went defensive — crossing out the word "comfort" from memos about the project and writing in "conference." Ah, "conference capsules" — much better.

Now that the press is on their case, the generals say they'll build only three of the little gems — and that they're cutting the project's cost in half.

As for the two leading geniuses behind this boondoggle, they of course have been promoted toward the pinnacle of America's defense command.