Your premise, and my response, was the supposedly high regard Democrats have for our military, but if you want to jink onto another subject: it's estimated that the 9/11 attack alone cost New York between fifty and a hundred billion dollars. If you fold in the economic impact across the country, it adds up to a lot more.

As far as plausible alternatives to military action after 9/11, I have yet to hear any. You're probably the only one here who thinks we shouldn't even be in Afghanistan.

The bill wasn't about providing health insurance to the poor. But I'm not going to go over that yet again.

BTW, you'll be tickled to hear that the Democrats, using their newly-found technique of Chaos Butterfly Economics, have bloated the eventual cost of the war over the next ten years to over $3 trillion--or about a fifth of the social spending entitlements (without the Butterfly method applied) over the same period.