I regularly William Arkin who chronicles the goings-on in the Pentagon. The amount of money wasted by the entire defense industry is truly astounding. This is a classic example:

The USS Virginia is the best any defense industry anywhere can build. The 377-foot long boat is so advanced it can be driven by only two sailors. The control room is modern and networked. Perhaps most radical is the elimination of the conventional periscope. The boat instead has a series of cameras and antennas embedded within its tower, housing intelligence collection equipment that can eavesdrop on enemy signals while the sub sits covertly under the sea.

Ok. So we have a new submarine that very well equipped. That's good. Right?

I know that The Day is hometown booster for the submarine team, but clearly the newspaper failed to see the irony that we built a $2.4 billion submarine bristling with Cold War capabilities, and where do we send it on its first deployment: to South America to spy on cell-phone conversations.

Sounds like a good use of high tech equipment .... more eavesdropping and in South America, that hotbed of terrorist activities. Can't get enough intelligence when there's none at the top though. And I'm sure the mission in spying on South America was a critical one:

"There's relatively little al-Qaida activity in this hemisphere, in Latin America. There is some, and there is some fundraising that takes place for other terrorist organizations, Hezbollah and the like." That's Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, appearing on the Hugh Hewitt radio show just last week.

As Rummy might say, one might expect this high tech device, if it's really needed, to be used in some other area of the globe? Like perhaps the Middle East? Later, Arkin indicates that in all fairness, this may have been a "shake-down" cruise to test the capabilities of the sub in safe waters. Perhaps. But I thought shake-down meant work out the bugs, the final run before reporting to duty. Right? Not in the highly efficient U.S. Navy:

When the USS Virginia returned to the United States, it entered the Groton shipyard for a year of post-construction work, additional billions.

What? It needs a full year to fix the bugs? Wonder how much it would cost to pay an Iraqi to infilitrate the Sunni insurgents. Or how about the cost of having a Pakistani join al Qaeda undercover?

Ah. But there's more:

Just this week, General Dynamics Electric Boat received lead funding for construction of the eighth, ninth and tenth Virginia class boats. That's a minimum of a cool $24 billion, a truly incredible story.

So there are going to be ten of these things?

For some perspective, just take a moment and visit the National Priorities website and just get a feel for what $24 Billion could do.