Provision of secure transportation is certainly as much a part of national security as military expenditures. The safety and fuel efficiency of passenger trains is as axiomatic as their clear history of proven security during wartime in the United States. Nobody's ever heard of a passenger train being used by terrorists to knock down a building like the World Trade Center -- yet the Bush Administration still "doesn't get it." As the Administration tries to drive cash-starved Amtrak into bankruptcy, the hard-pressed rail service has had to shut down its high speed train service in the Northeast because of the apparent inability to afford proper maintenance and development of its newest equipment. Military budgets weren't used to develop Amtrak's complex Acela high-speed train sets, yet the safety, security and fabulous fuel efficiency of modern trains might well make the nation more secure and help ease today's strains on its military by decreasing foreign oil dependency. While the rail service is starved out by Washington, it's hard to count the ways public money is poured into the airline industry -- much of whose modern jet technology development was paid for by taxpayers as military aviation innovation.