let's review, shall we: civil war, lincoln president, the first republican president. sc fires shots at ft. sumter, starting a shooting war. lincoln calls up 75k troops, who need to be equipped and supplied. this is left to the army quartermaster corp and, unfortunately for mr. lincoln, congress.

i didn't suggest that mr. lincoln was responsible for the endemic corruption in the system, far from it. no, that was pretty much the doing of congress and the "spoils" system of appointing govt officials.

afterwards, in large part because of the brazen corruption uncovered during the war, the "spoils" system is done away with, and replaced by the modern, professional, non-political civil service. for the most part, it works pretty well.

wwII, fdr, a democrat, is president. again, we're at war, troops called up, needing equipment and supplies. industrialists are drafted by fdr, to get the country on a war footing. there is some corruption in contract letting, but on nowhere near the scale that prevailed during mr. lincoln's administration.

again, it is investigated, led by democrats, and the corrupt parties rooted out; dem, rep., it doesn't matter. again, no hint that the prez is involved at all.

6 years into the bush administration, plenty of time to recognize and root out corruption, with a republican congress too. and yet...........nothing.

Description of Appeal to Common Practice

The Appeal to Common Practice is a fallacy with the following structure:

X is a common action.
Therefore X is correct/moral/justified/reasonable, etc.

Description of Two Wrongs Make a Right

Two Wrongs Make a Right is a fallacy in which a person "justifies" an action against a person by asserting that the person would do the same thing to him/her, when the action is not necessary to prevent B from doing X to A. This fallacy has the following pattern of "reasoning":

It is claimed that person B would do X to person A.
It is acceptable for person A to do X to person B (when A's doing X to B is not necessary to prevent B from doing X to A).

so, essentially mr. wilkes' defense is that the corruption is systemic, and he was just following those rules in his method of acquiring contracts?

why am i reminded of the contracting experience of another republican administration, during another war? the president then was a mr. a. lincoln. the war was the american civil war; paper shoes, boots that fell apart, cannon that exploded, rotted tinned beef, etc, were pawned off on the union army, the result of corrupt politicians, and political appointee procurement officers.

the present day civil service came about, largely as a consequence of the endemic corruption of the civil war, replacing appointees with people who gained their positions by merit. it was supposed to eliminate the influence of politics in the process.

it would appear that the current republican administration has hijacked the system, for the benefit of their buddies.