Bill Frist. Hates cats and soldiers…

…loves defense contracts and machines.

Bill Frist is the Majority Leader of the United States Senate. This is what that's led to...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Senate measure to fund the war in Iraq would chop money for troops' night vision equipment and new battle vehicles but add $230 million for a tilt-rotor aircraft that has already cost $18 billion and is still facing safety questions.

This is the Rumsfeld philosophy of military 'transformation' brought to it's ultimate conclusion. Machines over men. Toys for the brass, pork for the Congress and no troublesome morale problems or payroll.

To pay for the Ospreys, the Senate Appropriations Committee - guided by the Corps - cut into funding for night vision goggles, equipment for destroying mines and explosives, fire suppression systems for light armored vehicles and new vehicles that can be transported into battle inside the V-22.

Or maybe "mines and explosives" aren't a problem anymore.

I really don't know the details of the USMC's case for the Ospreys. I do know that an emergency appropriation for Katrina relief and the immediate needs of troops in harm's way is the wrong way to pay for them. This is for expenditures so critical that they must be made, even if they must be made off-budget.

But in a GOP led Senate, those immediate needs can be put off for most anything the Administration and Pentagon would rather push through without the scrutiny of the routine appropriations process.

For example, there's more than $3 billion in funding for an ongoing overhaul of the Army that the Pentagon admits isn't directly related to fighting the war.

Meanwhile, senators have added $228 million to procure seven C-17 Air Force cargo planes that can't be completed until 2008 at the earliest - and would eventually cost a total of almost $2 billion.

We need new leadership in the Senate. Leadership that will produce honest budgets and respect our troops enough not to load their emergency appropriations with irrelevant requisitions.

That requires a new majority in the Senate.

One more reason we must return Maria Cantwell to the Senate.