The threat of terrorism should not be understated, but is it necessary to dump the type of money into wasteful, big-ticket items that were necessary for the Cold War but are today ineffective in fighting unconventional warfare? CQ Today's Midday Update (free email service) has the scoop:

President Bush is requesting $419.3 billion for the Pentagon next year, a prodigious sum that exceeds the Cold War average and will grow larger still when fiscal 2006 supplemental spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is added. But buried within the rising defense budget are cuts to major defense programs that had lawmakers bracing for a brawl even before the budget was sent to Capitol Hill. The defense request is 15 percent higher in real, inflation-adjusted terms than the Cold War average, according to Steven Kosiak, a defense budget analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. It is driven by a nearly 8 percent boost in operations and maintenance spending to $147.8 billion, and an almost 5 percent hike in personnel accounts to $108.9 billion. By contrast, research and procurement accounts would get less-than-inflationary increases under the proposal. The White House would like $78 billion for military procurement and $69.4 billion for research and development initiatives.

As CQ notes, this record level of largesse doesn't even take into account the tens of billions to be spent in Iraq in the short term. It is essential to fully fund the military, but if we are to bankrupt America to futilely try to prove Europe wrong in Iraq it is simply not worth it.