What Are We? Pirates?

Again today I heard a commentator on the news use the phrase "blood and treasure" to describe what we have spent/lost in Iraq. I, for one, cannot stand this euphemism. It's "blood and money." "Treasure" is something for which you go hunting. "Treasure" is something you find in a sunken ship or an Egyptian burial vault.

Seriously, do American Navy captains hoist the black flag and sail about looting and plundering every merchant vessel they see? Did the Coast Guard run across one of those sunken Nazi subs full of gold meant for the Japanese? Did a subway engineer blast through the rock into the Founding Fathers' secret stash under Wall St.? Did an American soldier dig up a bunch of doubloons in the Iraqi desert? Where did all this "treasure" we spent come from?

Money does not become treasure until it's been loaded onto a Spanish Galleon and hidden away in a cave by a one-eyed pirate for a ragtag bunch of kids to find. So please folks, stop using the word "treasure" when you mean "money."

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