Throwing Money Down a Fire Pit

Remember those heady days when Paul Wolfowitz said Iraq's oil revenues would be sufficient for them to pay for their own reconstruction? Funny story...

President George W. Bush soon will ask Congress for another $120 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing their total cost so far to about $440 billion.

That's enough to buy General Motors Corp. 33 times or Google almost four times, at current stock prices.

Or, enough to buy one religious theocracy in the midst of a civil war, and one narco-terrorist state!

By the way, the Defense Department, WITHOUT this money, is getting something like $439 billion in the 2007 budget,a 5% increase over the previous year. Meanwhile, we just cut $39 billion in low-income federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid, TANF, the student loan program ($12 billion less for kids who want to go to college), and law enforcement for deadbeat dads who skip out on child support (!).

At what point did our priorities as a society get this out of whack?