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WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 — Senator Barack Obama will propose on Tuesday setting a goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons in the world, saying the United States should greatly reduce its stockpiles to lower the threat of nuclear terrorism, aides say.

In a speech at DePaul University in Chicago, Mr. Obama will add his voice to a plan endorsed earlier this year by a bipartisan group of former government officials from the cold war era who say the United States must begin building a global consensus to reverse a reliance on nuclear weapons that have become “increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.”

Mr. Obama, according to details provided by his campaign Monday, also will call for pursuing vigorous diplomatic efforts aimed at a global ban on the development, production and deployment of intermediate-range missiles.

“In 2009, we will have a window of opportunity to renew our global leadership and bring our nation together,” Mr. Obama is planning to say, according to an excerpt of remarks provided by his aides. “If we don’t seize that moment, we may not get another.”

His speech was to come one day after an announcement by the Bush administration that it had tripled the rate of dismantling nuclear weapons over the last year, putting the United States on track to reducing its stockpile of weapons by half by 2012.

The exact number of weapons being dismantled, like the overall stockpile, is secret, but officials said Monday that with the planned reductions, the total number of American nuclear weapons would be at the lowest levels since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president.

Under a 2002 treaty, the United States and Russia agreed to limit the number of operational nuclear weapons in their arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012, though that agreement did not address weapons in reserve stockpiles.

Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, is seeking to draw attention to his foreign policy views with the approach of the fifth anniversary of the Congressional vote authorizing military action in Iraq. He is highlighting his early opposition to the war, which he argues is a sign of judgment that is more important than the number of years served in Washington.

Mr. Obama, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, often tells voters that the Iraq war has consumed American foreign policy to the detriment of its ability to address other threats facing the nation. In his speech on Tuesday, aides said, Mr. Obama will assert, as he has before, that the United States should not threaten terrorist training camps with nuclear weapons.

If elected, Mr. Obama plans to say, he will lead a global effort to secure nuclear weapons and material at vulnerable sites within four years. He also will pledge to end production of fissile material for weapons, agree not to build new weapons and remove any remaining nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert.

In his speech, according to a campaign briefing paper, Mr. Obama also will call for using a combination of diplomacy and pressure to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs. Aides did not say what Mr. Obama intended to do if diplomacy and sanctions failed.

In setting a goal of eliminating nuclear weapons in the world, Mr. Obama is endorsing a call for “urgent new actions” to prevent a new nuclear era that was laid out in January in a commentary in The Wall Street Journal written by several former government officials. The authors of the article were George P. Shultz, secretary of state in the Reagan administration; Henry Kissinger, secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations; William J. Perry, secretary of defense in the Clinton administration; and Sam Nunn, a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

I agree. Nuclear weapons have the potential to destroy way too much with way too little. I am also firmly opposed to the idea that any nation or group of nations is better than others. The idea that WE are allowed to have nukes, but North Korea and Iran are not, means we think we're somehow better or more qualified than they to have these weapons. If we get rid of our entire nuclear arsenal, we have a right to ask other nations to do the same, or to not develop them at all. Until we do, we're just a bunch of bigoted hypocrites. We could just as easily fire an ICBM with a regular explosive as a nuclear one. This is one part I don't agree with. I think missiles should have as much range as they can be made to fly, so long as they can only hit singular targets with a minumun of collateral damage, as opposed to destroying entire cities. Still, we have a much better chance of convincing other nations to give up nukes if we set an example, and give them up ourselves.

I'm pretty comfortable with the U.S. having nukes. It's the best deterrent possible against a nuclear attack, not just in the US but in any country friendly with the US.

How does the US getting rid of nukes help prevent nuclear terrorism?

Right. If Osama bin Laden somehow did attack with a nuke, who would we use our nukes on? Would we wipe out the entire city of Bagdad, killing hundreds of innocent civilians along with a few forieghn terrorists? Or maybe we would simply attack every country in which Al Quaida operates, causing all these countries to form together into an Anti-coalition organization, and we can launc ouselves right int WWIII, with nukes and everything. Having nukes prevents National Governments from attacking us, not terrorist. And we still have one of the largest and most well equipped armies in the world. If a nation attacked us, they would face the full force of our conventional armed forces, and that of other nations. This is precisly what happened in Iraq, except we weren't attacked with those weapons, and there is doubt they even existed. But the response to any nation using nukes against another would be the same, Invasion by an internationa coalition.

As for the problems with dismanteling nuclear weapons, and what to do with the material, I have a simple solution, the Space Shuttle. Launch them into orbit in the hold of the Shuttle, then fire them off to detonate in deep space, far away from Earth. The radioactive material would scatter, and continue to scatter indefinitally, meaning theres no radiation contamination, AND that would make absoulty certain they never fell into the wrong hands. Problem solved.

All I could see was "Drastic change in amount of nukes in 2012" I'm not saying we're all going to die in 2012, but I still believe something's going to happen.

Back to the point, though. Of course we're getting rid of nukes now, we're going into the age of anti-matter! All we have to do is pack up 6 feet of anti-matter into a vaccume seal and drop it on our enemies! Then half the world will have decentigrated and all will be well for humanity will be destroyed... Seeing as nothing good will come from our existance, and continuing our lives will only incourage distruction in the future, we might as well just destroy the earth right now and get it all over with. Only people left will be the astronauts in space at the time, and they would only survive for a certain amount of time until they run out of food. Even if they do survive, they're too peaceful to recreate a talitarianistic society.

As for Obama, good for him! He's trying to do something that will wind up killing us all! After all, think about it. When we have no more nukes, what's going to save us from other countries? Especially since Russia can't prove they're doing anything with their nukes. I mean, they still have like 80% of their nukes hidden out some where, deactivated. All they have to do is say they don't know where they are, and reactivate them, and they have a world dominate power. Of course they can't fire it anywhere in Asia seeing as it would end up radiating their own country...

Anyways, what I'm getting at is that it doesn't matter what Obama thinks. Let's just get him in office, because honestly, anything is better than Hillary! I'm not just saying this cuz I lean more to the right, if that were the case I'd be flaming Obama too. Hillary is just evil, and would always hover over the nuke button. She's controling and is just trying to be President so she could be one step closer to Dictator. Plus, let us not forget that the US is in about, what, $10 trillion in debt? What good will she be doing if she brings up a plan that will put us deeper into debt!?