What does it take to catch Osama bin Laden?

Expensive leather seats, flat screen TVs, stereo speakers and a full-length mirror enclosed within a luxury capsule and occupied by Air Force generals.

Really.

That's what the Air Force is using some of its anti-terrorism funds for.

So far, the brass has spent $16 million on the still-incomplete capsules, which would be installed on planes as a sort of room within the plane so generals could have a level of comfort and convenience commensurate with their egos, er, status.

The Project for Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog, has written to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, about the project.

The group's letter states:

"At a cost of millions of dollars, the highest levels of the Air Force have emphasized two little-known programs to build 'world-class' luxury aircraft accommodations for military and senior civilian leaders under the justification of a 'deficiency gap.' These accommodations do not provide any additional operational capabilities (e.g. communications advantages) beyond those currently existing, according to contract documents. Funding for these programs was requested in the recently passed Global War On Terrorism supplemental."

Among the costs was $116,000 to accommodate a request from a general to re-upholster the leather chairs in Air Force blue rather than brown.

Gates and his boss, President Bush, should already be on the phone to some of these generals. The term "ream 'em out" comes to mind.

Or maybe a firing -- a big, public firing on the White House lawn.

When our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have waited to get equipment that will save their lives, generals back on the home front are spending millions on luxury.

By the way, the name of the luxury "rooms": comfort capsules.