IN WASHINGTON CIRCLES, PORK ALWAYS PLENTIFUL ON THE TABLE

President George Bush, with his decision on the unilateral elimination of short-range nukes, pushed onward in recognizing our diminished military and intelligence role in a post Cold War era. For almost half a century, our focus has been on the perceived threat from the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact satellites.

That era has ended. Every President from Truman to Bush shares in the credit for a steadfastness of purpose that brought victory and, with it, the obsolescence of a great deal of our defense and intelligence apparatus. Much of our military and intelligence capacity became instantly useless when the Berlin Wall collapsed and the Soviet Union disintegrated, both as an economic and military power.

We now need a greatly downsized military machine capable of fighting second raters like Saddam Hussein, not a super power colossus like the Soviet Union (if, in fact, we are willing even to assume Robert Gates' stated intelligence estimate as to the sustainable war-making capacity of the remaining Soviet Union).

The eternal cold warrior, Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R, Wy.), scolded the president for telling the truth about useless nukes "just at the time we are considering the defense budget." To Wallop, truth is the constant enemy of a bloated defense budget. Post "Evil Empire" irrelevancies abound. The first cut ought to be the Stealth Bomber at $865 million per copy. For all the years that it has been advocated, it had a single purpose: to penetrate "sophisticated" Soviet air defenses. Congress should scrap this Goliath of the air and along with it the Goliath of the seas, the $2 billion Seawolf submarine.

Over time, there are billions more that could be saved in the wake of the Cold War victory. From anti-Soviet intelligence operations, perhaps $10 to $15 billion in spending can be eliminated. Military bases, domestic and foreign (tell the Philippines Congress we are delighted they are kicking us out of Subic Bay) and other anti-Soviet hardware can also be significantly downsized. We need, as President Bush has stated "a first-rate military machine," but we do not need one predicated on almost half a century of anti-Soviet defense policy.

There are at least two glitches in this: generals and admirals who must have tanks, planes and ships or else they aren't generals and admirals; and Congressmen who must have pork barrel military projects to feed their districts. Military junkies remember a bemusing speech by Sen. Alan Cranston (D, Cal.) vigorously supporting the B-1B bomber as being "vital" to our nation's future. The plane was made by Rockwell in his home state. Sadly, it couldn't fly as high as a World War II B-17, and was so worthless as to not even be considered for deployment to the Persian Gulf. Yet Cranston loved it, but hated almost any other weapon system made in any other state.

To many in Congress, weapons are pork just like bricks and cement. Keep production lines open whether the stuff is needed or not indeed, keep `em open even when the military people don't want the stuff. In Washington pork is always on the table.