If America is to win the War on Terror, the tyrants obstructing the larger U.S. undertaking - that is, ushering parts of the Middle East from medievalism into modernity - must understand that this nation intends to finish the fight.

But to accomplish this, America needs to beef up its military.

During the Cold War, the Soviet threat was countered with a standing army of more than 760,000 GIs. Today's number: 504,000.

And not all of these troops are combat-ready. With 17 brigades serving tours in Iraq and Afghanistan , only two or three combat brigades - 7,000 to 10,000 soldiers - are immediately deployable. This, clearly, is insufficient.

America plainly has the resources to field an Army large enough to fight the War on Terror. But it seems to simply lack the will.

In the next two weeks, President Bush is expected to sign the Defense Authorization Act, which Congress passed last week before adjourning. Weighing in at $463.8 billion, the bill hikes next year's defense budget by $21.2 billion, or 3.6 percent in real terms. And for the first time, the budget includes the funding for the war - $70 billion for next year.

But that's not all.

This being an election year for a Congress we've come to know only too well, members also tucked in more than 2,000 earmarks - pork-barrel items for local districts. (That's the earmark count so far from Taxpayers for Common Sense, which is still mining the massive bill.)

"There are 2,000 earmarks in the bill directed by members of Congress - somewhere around $8 billion - and a large portion of those don't have anything to do with the mission of the Defense Department," Congress' leading anti-pork agitator, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), said.

He's right. Just look at some of the items: $3.5 million for Alaska Land Mobile Radio; $1.95 million for a narcotics-lab detection system; $1.2 million for a prostate-cancer DNA-detection initiative - to name just a few.

Some of these projects may be worthy. But why fund them with defense dollars?

In all, TCS projects this bill will meet or beat the record $11.2 billion in pork projects stuffed into last year's bill.

Curious about who's behind the giveaways? Too bad. While the House recently mandated that members attach names to earmarks, the bill's authors claim in a postscript that the new rules don't cover these 2,000-plus earmarks.

"Simply put, earmarking defense dollars dilutes the effectiveness of defense spending. Instead of funding programs relative to their necessity for national security, lawmakers are focused on protecting their local district's jobs and parochial pork," the taxpayer group notes.

Too true. Just think: How many soldiers could $11 billion finance?

The Rand Corp.'s Arroyo Center puts the initial cost of equipping a new brigade at $1 billion, plus $500 million for infrastructure costs (training facilities, firing ranges, etc.).

So $11 billion translates into at least seven heavy-medium brigades, adding 30,000 combat-ready troops to the Army.

At a time when many active-duty soldiers are about to begin their third tour of duty in Iraq in 31/2 years, this is no small thing.

Of course, the chances of this happening are precisely zero: The Defense Department remains opposed to any meaningful expansion of the armed forces - and Congress has gone home.

Yet with elected representatives home wooing voters, now's not a bad time for taxpayers to ask why they're spending $11 billion on defense-related earmarks - that is, incumbency-protection items - when the Army is stretched so thin?

There's a war on, after all.