Todd Tiahrt: “Another thing Congress must consider in this whole scenario is, looking back over history and saying, when we do have a…”

“Another thing Congress must consider in this whole scenario is, looking back over history and saying, when we do have a difference of opinion between our European allies and our own country and we employ our young men and women to carry out the will of this country, will our foreign suppliers be there to supply us in our time of need? During the Gulf War, we had allies that disagreed with what we were doing and they failed to supply the parts that we needed to keep our young men and women safe while they carried out the will of this Nation so they could come home safely to their families. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, again, our European allies failed to support us when, in our time of need and through great diplomatic strains and a lot of harsh words, finally we were able to find suppliers that were going to give us the parts that we needed so that our young men and women could carry out the will of this country and come home safely to their families. Once again, in this system, it is a single point of failure system. It is a system that, if it is down, everything does not function. We cannot transport aircraft from the East Coast to the West Coast for our military without tankers. We cannot supply our troops or carry our troops anywhere outside the continental United States without aerial refueling tankers. If we are going to respond to a natural disaster like the tsunami in southeast Asia, we have to have air refueling tankers.”