Treasure and lives

That sound you hear is our children's future and our peers' lives being flushed down the toilet:

The Senate agreed Thursday to spend an additional $63 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as it passed a bill to finance military spending.

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The bill now totals $469.7 billion. It grew more than $16 billion during a debate that began in July and was suspended during lawmakers’ four-week August recess.

Lawmakers expect $7 billion to be added during House-Senate talks on a compromise bill. The House passed its version of the Pentagon budget bill in June.

With the latest infusion of money, Congress will have approved about $500 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other antiterrorism efforts in the five years since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the Congressional Research Service.

$500 billion.

And what do we have to show for it? No Osama. A new theocratic regime in the Middle East that's hostile to the United States. A resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. We could go on and on about foreign affairs, and we haven't even touched the catastrophe of the GOP's domestic policies.

$500 billion.

An awful lot of good could've been done with that money in the right hands. Instead, we got stuck with a lot of awful...