Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently wrote an opinion article for The New York Times, titled “The price of freedom in Iraq.” In the article, Rumsfeld addresses growing concerns about the war in Iraq by asking the rhetorical question “Was it worth it?” The secretary answers his own question with an inspiring, “You bet.”

You’re absolutely correct, Mr. Secretary, we as Americans did indeed gamble with war. A year after conflict began in Iraq, many Americans are looking back over the past year and considering the costs of that war.

An estimated 10,000 Iraqi civilians, 101 foreign soldiers and 556 U.S. troops (including 10 Iowans) have died since the conflict began. Congress approved billions already for the war in Iraq and seems to be scrambling for billions more as it becomes clear that rebuilding an entire nation is more difficult than simply destroying it.

The Bush Administration’s 2005 fiscal defense budget of $401.7 billion, incredibly, includes no money for Iraq and Afghanistan. As concerns about the cost of the Iraq war grow alongside a still weakened economy, Americans are concerned more with the price of freedom in America, not Iraq.

The clear objective of our invasion of Iraq was to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In his January 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush cemented the goal of an invasion of Iraq: “The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.”

A year later, with not a single warhead taken and not a single chemical or biological weapon confiscated, the President’s stated goal for conflict in Iraq must be seen as having failed entirely.

The costs of war are quickly becoming burdensome, and we need to find answers to our budget concerns. The war on terrorism and the war in Iraq are draining away funding from other federal spending programs, which is to be expected in a time of need.

However, billions of federal dollars are being wasted on the continued production and maintenance of nuclear warheads for the United States. We cannot fight the war on terrorism with nuclear bombs, and yet the current military budget calls for approximately 30 billion dollars annually to finance our nuclear arsenal.

To put our arsenal in perspective, keep in mind the current known U.S. stockpile of nuclear warheads is equivalent to the power of 150,000 Hiroshima-size bombs, or enough to destroy the earth eight times over. Even the use of one of those warheads is unthinkable, especially to fight terror.

There is no feasible war scenario that would call for this destruction. For the sake of international security and in the face of our own budget crisis, why not dismantle a portion of the warheads and cut the funding for our nuclear arsenal in half?

This is the idea proposed by the people at truemajority.org, the online head of the grassroots organization Priorities, Inc. The idea is that by cutting funding for our unnecessarily large nuclear arsenal by as much as half, we would free $15 billion annually to be used for other financially strained federal programs such as K-12 education, Head Start and fighting world hunger.

If cutting defense measures makes you uneasy, imagine the good that extra $15 billion could do when put into our Homeland Security measures.

The funds could be used to ensure our soldiers receive the best possible medical care while in combat or could be divided among the 50 states to burgeon new state-wide emergency and security efforts. The money could be used to fight forest fires, curb teenage pregnancy, help conservation efforts and invest in alternative energy or to even fight AIDS. The money could be better used in almost any other area than in the production and maintenance of nuclear weapons of mass destruction that ensure only radiation and death, not success in the war on terror.

The United States retains no defensive advantage with our incredible surplus of nuclear warheads.

Even if we cut our nuclear arsenal in half, we still retain the power to destroy the world several times over.

Rather than weakening our defenses, cutting spending on nuclear weapons will only free misused funds for better purposes.

We invaded Iraq in the name of ending the production and sale of weapons of mass destruction. When we attempt to lead the world in an effort to end the production and use of weapons of mass destruction, we should always lead first by example.