From Joe Galloway’s column…

Under the triumvirate of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, little of the
trillions spent on defense over the last six years has gone to those
who are bearing 95 percent of the burden of the war of necessity in
Afghanistan and the war of choice in Iraq. While those wars ground up
tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles and helicopters and Humvees by the
thousands, without enough money to repair or replace them, new
high-tech Air Force planes and Navy ships ate up the Pentagon budget
and padded the bottom lines of the big defense contractors/campaign
contributors.

Even if the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended tomorrow, the
damage that’s been done to our Army and Marine Corps is incalculable,
and from past bitter experience after Vietnam, it’s a good bet that
repairing that damage will take a decade or more and cost trillions.

That means that long after Bush and his deputies have retired
to their gated compounds and a $500 million presidential library, we’ll
be less able to defend our nation in a new era made far deadlier by
their disastrous decisions.

Their war-and-peace decisions, warped by arrogance and
ignorance, will haunt all of us, and the postponed sacrifices will come
due with a vengeance.