"The Air Force selected the Vermont Guard as its preferred choice for
the F-35s on the merits, based on the Vermont Air Guard's unsurpassed record,
its top-flight personnel and facilities, and its strategic location. Vague,
anonymous, uninformed and rehashed conspiracy theories cannot change those facts."
Elements of dishonesty in this statement include:
(1) The first sentence blurs the distinction between selecting the Vermont Air Guard as the first Guard unit to have the F-35, and the basing decision not yet made with regard to the Burlington Airport. That decision will at least purport to be based on other criteria entirely, include those in the environmental impact statement that assesses social, environmental, and health issues, among others.
(2) The case for a "strategic location," in northern Vermont, next to the Canadian border, has yet to be made. Leahy and others typically praise the Air Guard for "its voluntary and near-constant response to the 9/11 attacks for 122 consecutive days." While true, this omits the reality that the Air Guard responded only after the attacks. Earlier, when one of the hijacked airliners came up the Hudson Valley near Vermont, the F-16s in Burlington sat on the ground.
(3) "Vague" is just false. The critiques of the Air Force plans have been detailed and precise, whether presented by a former Pentagon planner, lawyers, reporters, or others. Leahy's responses, when he has responded, have mostly been as vague as this one.
(4) "Anonymous_ -- while the Globe story refers to two or more anonymous sources, it also quotes acting assistant secretary of the Air Force Kathy Ferguson and Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh III, both of whom acknowledge fact and processes errors that the Air Force needed to correct.
(5) "Uninformed" is almost laughable, since the most germane critiques of the basing proposal are derived from information provided by the Air Force in its environmental impact statement of March 2012, which is currently in the process of being finalized (a necessary element of the basing decision).
(6) "Rehashed conspiracy theories" is a wing nut straw man argument, since the core arguments against the F-35 require no conspiracies to be correct. All they require is bad judgment of one sort or another.
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