National security weapon -- the hybrid car

It's taken far too long, but President Bush deserves credit for putting our money and his mouth behind one of America's most hawkish national security weapons.

In his State of the Union speech and in his 2006 budget, the president has strongly supported the procurement of sophisticated high-tech hardware that is crucial to our homeland security _ but was never in the arsenal blueprint of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld or the joint chiefs.

It is the hybrid car _ no longer just the Toyota Prius, but a growing and improving array of fuel-efficient vehicles now on the roads and on the drawing boards. For a half-dozen years, faithful readers of this column have read that these new gasoline-and-electric-powered vehicles are a vital weapon in America's battle with itself to achieve independence from imported oil. That's how long it has been since hybrid cars were first at hand.

Now, this year, hybrid vehicles also get Uncle Sam's helping hand _ in the form of a fistful of tax credit dollars, $3,000-plus for taxpayers who want to buy one. But as we'll discuss in a minute, it is a bizarre application that falls short of the noble goal of using tax policy to promote other positive policies, in this case national security policy goals of weaning the United States off Middle East oil _ a policy that has warped U.S. foreign policy for generations and now, in the age of militant Islamic terrorism, threatens our nation's safety today and for years to come.

"I agree with Americans who understand being hooked on foreign oil as an economic problem and a national security problem," Bush told CBS News' Bob Schieffer last Sunday, previewing this week's State of the Union address on "Face the Nation."

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