Breach of Trust Quotes
Bush had stated when he was running for President that he was opposed to placing America’s nuclear waste in the Nevada mountain which was very unpopular with Nevada voters, but once in the Presidency he changed his position. The reason might have been that there was no backup plan to Yucca Mountain that Bush could select. It was wither Nevada or back to the drawing board with radioactive waste piling up each day.
Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin, tried his hand as a gun manufacturer early in the history of the new nation. He persuaded President Thomas Jefferson that he could manufacture muskets with interchangeable parts in an era where each gun was made uniquely and there were no “spare parts.” So Whitney was the first of the American Defense Contractors. He was also the first to fail to deliver on his contract. His guns were years late and when they were finally delivered, they were very expensive and worse, not very good. The reason that this quotation is cited is that while Irvine was trying to recover the taxpayer’s money, Whitney visited the Secretaries of State and War as well as President Madison and members of Congress. The result was to give Whitney another chance and another big order for 15,000 guns. Even Whitney later admitted that these were not very good. Some argue that this quotation shows that nothing has changed much in military procurement and defense spending.
Arnold was not just any senior officer, but one who had been a great fighter against the British not only, leading his men brilliantly but exposed himself to great danger in the process. He had been such a hero that Washington could not imagine how an officer like that could become a traitor to the cause. Arnold’s treasom had nothing to do with ideology or the issues of the war. Arnold felt that he had not been appreciated for his efforts (his commanding officer gave him no credit for the most heroic and effective military battlefield leadership up to that point in the war) and became disaffected.
