Fight over Air Force tanker gets personal

The fight over the Air Force's new air refueling tanker is getting very personal. The mayor of Mobile, Ala., released a sarcastic letter addressed to the personal physician of Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) suggesting that the senator has mental health issues.

"Would you please check on your patient?  Her recent remarks indicating that she has “never seen anybody in Alabama building anything” makes me believe that she may be off her medications," Mobile Mayor Samuel Jones wrote on Tuesday.

His letter comes in response to statements Murray, a strong Boeing supporter, made on NPR's All Things Considered on Dec. 14. Boeing and a team of Northrop Grumman-EADS North America are going head-to-head for the $40 billion Air Force tanker. The Northrop Grumman-EADS team would assemble the tankers in Mobile, Ala.  The competition for the tanker is politically charged and has dragged on for years now.

Murray said on NPR:  “I have stood on the line in Everett, Washington, where we have thousands of workers who go to work everyday to build these planes.  I would challenge anybody to tell me that they’ve stood on a line in Alabama and seen anybody building anything.”

The Mobile mayor continues in his letter to Murray's physician: "As you and the rest of the informed world know, Alabama is an epicenter of high-tech industrial production.  That is why Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, and Honda have located state-of-the-art assembly plants here.  There are over 300 Alabama aerospace industries producing the rocket boosters for our space program and missiles for our national defense.  Ironically, Boeing has recognized the strength of the Alabama workforce as it is one of our largest defense contractors."

And the mayor, who has made the rounds in Washington several times to discuss the tanker contract, also recommends to the pretend physician for Murray a course of treatment:

"In addition to whatever therapy the Senator might need, you may want to consider prescribing a curative change of scenery and a restorative vacation in Mobile, Alabama.  I will be pleased to host Senator Murray, give her a tour of some of the most sophisticated manufacturing facilities in the world and introduce her to a workforce that is second to none.  After she tours the next-generation littoral combat ship USS Independence, built in Mobile by Austal Shipbuilding, and the many existing aerospace facilities at Brookley Field, this may provide medical relief if not a cure for Senator Murray’s current delusion," Jones wrote.

The Air Force last February awarded a $35 billion contract to the Northrop-EADS team to build the new tankers. Boeing successfully protested that award with the Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon decided to reopen the competition for the tanker--leaving the Washington State and Alabama delegations in a tug-of-war once more.

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