Mark Weisbrot in CommonDreams revisits the point made by Dr. Martin Luther King, who wryly noted that dollars spent on war were dollars not spent on poverty, And that's more evident today.

The Bush team aims to substitute an open-ended "war against terrorism," including pre-emptive and preventive wars, for the Cold War and "anti-communist" crusades of the past. But this time -- because of the institutional and political changes of the last two decades -- if their pretext for foreign intervention proves successful, there will be no accompanying social progress on the home front.

But that's the whole point, isn't it? These vindictive rightwingers would gladly spend on guns rather than butter. More proof that the real war is over here, not over there.