"WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD SHIP 360 TONS OF CASH TO A WAR ZONE?" Indeed. I don't remember the name of the outraged legislator that posed that question due to the fact that I was reeling from my chair. Nine billion dollars. Cash. Shipped aboard a monstrous cargo plane straight to the war zone. And no paper trail as to what became of it. (By the time that tidbit was revealed I was on the floor gasping for breath.)

As a mental exercise, I tried to grasp the sheer immensity of it all. A modern round-bale of prairie hay weighs at about one ton each. I figure that stacked and wrapped money would be a bit denser due to the fabric and the ink, so let us say a bale o' cash weighs 2 tons. Let's say that you could stick twenty such bales of greenbacks per tractor-trailer rig. That would be 13 semi-trucks full of cash. With no bill of lading.

As choppers begin to drop out of the skies in Iraq, I wonder just how much of that shipment the arms traders have snapped up. Iraq is geographically close to Russia, the motherland of arms deals. It's an established fact that helicopters are susceptible to small arms fire, much less hand-held missile launchers. Every instinct in my body screams that we've armed the militias that are shooting at our troops.

As the war jets roar over the Smokey Hill bombing range in ever increasing frequency it's no wonder Iran is bantering sabers with Condi Rice and King George the II. It's good business.