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re: Your criticisms of this position slice both ways
Tom Brosz — (archived)

Suppose we catch agents of a foreign government suspected of dealing with terrorists purchasing a nuclear weapon- suppose we also raid a terrorist traing camp in said country and find manuals for detonating that bomb as well as maps of New York and casualty estimates for various points of detonation. Thats irrefutable.

Send in the boys in camo.

Excuse me. You already did. Or did you accomplish that raid in a foreign nation, based on suspicion alone, using the Girl Scouts? I like to think we actually did stuff like that under the radar using special forces troops, but naturally we don't hear about it. Dropping ANY number of troops into a hostile nation for any reason is not that much more popular politically than just rolling in the tanks.

Suppose we locate a lab inside some country and trace shipments of huge amounts of growth medium and supplies consistent with biowarfare. Suppose UAVs pick up traces of BioAgent. Suppose further that we have infiltrated their intelligence service, and locate document detailing the time table of and strategy for a Ricin/anthrax/retrovirus attack on a US city. Invade the idiots. No problem.

This would work, but implies that about one in every six Iraqis working on WMD is an American agent, and that the Iraqis are stupid enough to write down their plans. It's worth noting that when defectors told stories similar to this, you didn't believe them. Would you believe them from CIA agents?

That our intelligence (and Britain's) was "hotly contested" across the planet before the fact is a fantasy rewrite of history. Go back and look again. The only hotly contested issue was HOW Saddam should be disarmed.

Where is my bar? Depends on the situation. I was satisfied by what I saw in intelligence on Iraq before the fact (what was released publicly, of course), and can't see how anyone could have come up with any other conclusion given what was seen on the ground, what information Saddam was feeding out, how he was behaving, and a consistent pattern of deceit and concealment. Remember, even Saddam's own generals thought they had WMD. And the jury is far from out on Saddam's terror connections.

Some other situations:

I think a precision strike on Iran's nuclear capacity is long overdue, and I hope Israel has the balls for it if we don't. The U.N. is being led down the primrose path yet again.

We are not leaning nearly as hard on Syria as we should be, and there is still a lot of room there for actions other than military.

North Korea is on the border of China, and directly north of an important ally that is quite vulnerable. I don't have a good answer for that one, but somehow they have to have their nukes shut down as well. Ideally, China would do it. One would think that they wouldn't want a nuclear-armed looney in range of their cities any more than the rest of us.

I have conceded your point that this doctrine is a risky one. But when a handful of men can kill thousands of people, or even more, the rules of warfare that served when war was fought in ranks and lines aren't going to work any more.

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