The military doesn't want it. The military says it is unneeded. But Teddy Kennedy wants it anyway -- and so is acting to see that a $100 million dollar contract is for the unnecessary jet engine is awarded to a company in his state as part of a $480 million dollar appropriation for the project.

For the second year in a row the Pentagon has insisted that it doesn't need another engine for its next-generation fighter jet. And again, Senator Edward M. Kennedy and other powerful lawmakers are forcing it to build one anyway.

Tucked in the annual defense bill moving through Congress is $480 million to develop a spare engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter even though the Air Force concluded in 2005 that it was redundant -- and two independent review boards agreed.

That didn't trump pork-barrel politics.

General Electric Aircraft Engines in Lynn is designing the spare engine and says the project will bring jobs to the Bay State. That led Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat and member of the Armed Services Committee, to keep the project alive.

Last month, Kennedy personally "earmarked" $100 million for the engine -- more than 20 percent of its cost -- during committee deliberations over the 2008 defense authorization bill. Other lawmakers whose home states could also benefit inserted the rest of the funding.

Gee -- I wonder what a half-billion dollars could do for the troops in Iraq, who are slowly winning a war that Teddy Kennedy is seeking to undermine while using the Defense Department budget to distribute federal largesse around his state.