A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.

(With apologies to Ev Dirksen's ghost.)

The estimates being tossed around for the incremental cost of Bushco's current escalation in Iraq approximate the total annual funding for the National Cancer Institute - about $6 billion - as reported in this story in this morning's New York Times, which breaks down the entire cost of the train wreck in Iraq - a trillion or more - in terms of what else could be had for the money.

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot....