Boeing appealed the tanker contract? What?  You woke me up early the day after I get back from vacation to tell me that? Of course Boeing appealed the Pentagon's decision to buy tankers from the EADS/Northrop Grumman joint venture. We knew all along that whoever didn't win the contract was going to appeal.

So unless you've got some interesting news, I'm just gonna go back to bed here for a bit, because, OK . . . well, yes, that is a good point Norm Dicks (D-Sunset Beach) made this morning, reminding the Air Force secretary that the only reason Boeing offered up the smaller KC-767 instead of a larger plane based on the 777 was that the generals told Boeing they preferred the smaller plane. Given that, it does seem a little strange now that the Pentagon's all excited about the KC-30 because it's a bigger plane.

But jeez, you know, I'm jet-lagged and Daylight Savings Time and . . . what, you say that some of John McCain's top advisers were lobbying on behalf of Airbus? Well, duh, McCain himself's been more than a little helpful to Airbus through this whole tanker thing. And it's not as if EADS has never (allegedly) had a politician in its back pocket before. So why should we be surprised if . . .

Wait a minute. I get it. This is a pretty good election-year issue for the Democrats: They get to blame McCain for sending U.S. jobs overseas, and hint that maybe he's a little too cozy with those cheese-eating surrender monkeys in France, and both will undercut his already-thin support from conservatives.

But still, I'm pretty tired, and this politics stuff can go on forever, so unless you've got some coffee on - wait, who am I kidding, we're in Seattle. OK, just hand me a mug and you can show me just what rationalizations Boeing is giving for delaying this thing yet again.

Hmm . . . well, you're right, this part is interesting. According to a memo somebody slipped to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Boeing claims that the computer modeling software the Pentagon used to determine which tanker would best-fit into the Air Force's operations was developed by Northrop Grumman. That's smells a little fishy, doesn't it? Ask Northrop which tanker will work best and of course Northrop will say its will. And Boeing says in most other facets of the competition, it got top scores. So why would the Air Force . . .

Ah, here we go, and this doesn't look good. Tanker guru Loren Thompson at the Lexington Institute says a big factor in the Pentagon's decision for the EADS/Northrop tanker was that Boeing had an attitude.

"The Boeing team was not responsive and often was not even polite," Thompson told The New York Times.

You think that doesn't matter? Remember how Boeing landed the lease deal for the 100 tankers in the beginning? It was because Darleen Druyun liked Boeing better. Thompson himself is so tapped-in that we've got to take his word on this. And it's not as if Boeing management has never been arrogant before - Commercial Airplanes Cougar-in-Chief Scott Carson talks a lot about it being the root cause of why the company lost market dominance to Airbus on the commercial side. Maybe he needs to relay that to his defense-side counterparts.

To be honest, I'm not so sure the tanker win is such a great deal for EADS anyway. Airbus has had more than its share of problems operating two different factories in two different countries in Europe. How the Sam Hill does Team Toulouse think it's going to be able to operate a third production facility when it's in a whole different continent?

So what's it all mean? I think we're fated for a series of Congressional hearings on tanker issues that will last into the fall. Whatever the Government Accountability Office decides about the appeal, Congress has the final word, and Democrats will want to continue to undermine McCain as best they can. This will likely drag on through the election in November. Maybe - just maybe - President Bush will get tanker procurement bill to sign before he leaves office.

And you know, Boeing may have a point or two to make about the selection criteria: the size issue, for starters, and the decision to use Northrop's own software to evaluate the competing bids.

Still, when all is said and done, Boeing's bumbled this badly - again. The company should have landed the original contract in 2003, but didn't because of the Druyun-Mike Sears debacle, and it should have won this campaign too. Whatever the outcome of the appeal and Congressional hearings, the fact that the Pentagon passed on Boeing's bid is a sign of problems within the company's defense division that need to be addressed.