Hot pursuit of answers on tanker decision

Washington's congressional delegation is turning up the heat on the Air Force tanker decision to see if Boeing had a fair chance at a $40 billion contract ingloriously lost to overseas competition.

Sen. Patty Murray squares off today with Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley. Murray will pursue the national-security risks with having the refueling tankers built by Northrop Grumman and EADS, the European parent of Airbus.In tag-team fashion, Murray picks up after Rep. Norm Dicks' mauling of the Air Force on Monday. He flatly claimed Congress had been misled.

Dicks, vice chair of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, said he viewed the process as seriously flawed, and it was entirely appropriate for the Government Accountability Office and Congress to make a final determination about the best replacement option.

Boeing was sufficiently emboldened by the outrage on Capitol Hill to lodge its first protest of a Pentagon decision in three decades. Chairman and CEO Jim McNerney pointed to inconsistency in requirements, cost factors and treatment of Boeing's commercial data.

Another name in the tortuous history of this lucrative tanker deal made an indirect appearance: Republican Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. He had been an intense critic when a deal with Boeing appeared close in 2001.

On Tuesday, The Associated Press reported top current advisers to McCain's presidential bid had been lobbying for the European consortium that prevailed over Boeing.

As Dicks was asking how overseas government subsidies factored into the EADS bid, the company was reporting annual losses.

Critics are determined to turn inquiries by Dicks and Murray, and Boeing's appeal, into sour grapes. Hard questions that make military brass squirm are fair game. The hometown stake in jobs is real, but ultimately all of America's taxpayers are paying the bill, and financing their own defense. Did they get the best deal?

Keep pushing the appeal to a credible conclusion.