If ever there was an indictment of the wanton ways that the Pentagon wastes money, a new report by government auditors is it. Dozens of the Pentagon’s most costly weapons programs are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.

President Bush and a far-too-compliant Congress have already wasted more than $600 billion on the disastrous Iraq war. Since Mr. Bush took office, the Pentagon’s weapons acquisition budget has doubled from $790 billion in 2000 to $1.6 trillion last year.

Now, in stark terms, we see that an unseemly percentage of that money has gone to wasteful cost overruns and delays. Even when weapons systems are finally delivered, investigators say, far too many fail to deliver the capabilities promised. One example: the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile recorded four failures in four flight tests in 2007.

Figures compiled by the Government Accountability Office showed that 95 major weapons systems  including ballistic missile defense, the Joint Strike Fighter and the Littoral Combat Ship  have exceeded their original budgets by a mind-numbing total of $295 billion in the past seven years. In 2000, new weapons were running 6 percent over initial cost estimates; by 2007, that figure had skyrocketed to 26 percent.