This $87 billion request is in addition to $79B already approved by Congress. This morning I was listening to Paul Wolfowitz being interviewed on NPR chiding the American public about needing to be committed and following through. You have to wonder about the thought process that allows someone to be able to say this with a straight face after having spent the previous year trying to convince everyone that a war in Iraq would be quick, painless, and cheap.
And of course, looking at these numbers again brings to mind the classic Eisenhower quote:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.