Rafe Coburn has this short but incisive criticism:

I think one of the reasons I'm so obsessed with missile defense is that I find that the program is emblematic about every initiative pursued by the Bush administration. Success is judged by intentions rather than by results.

He's not the first to observe this -- Fareed Zakaria made a similar point in Newsweek awhile back, specifically about Iraq -- but to see it expressed so clearly and simply is illuminating, I think.

The point of that particular post was missile defense, and he pointed to this Slate article noting that it still doesn't work yet we're still throwing billions of dollars into it.
posted by Paul Murray at 10:49 AM | permanent link

Another one of those pesky facts that most people aren't aware of:

The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade.

A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan.

posted by Paul Murray at 1:15 PM | permanent link