"I've always found that reality usually happens in quite unanticipated ways."

truer words were never spoken...and you'd think that with all the wars men have started throughout history, they should have learned this by now. right off the bat, they proceeded to lose half of them, and even the ones they won always turned out very differently than they expected. that alone should make you wonder about the alleged judgement of the military mind. as in so many of our actions, the consequences of war are not only unanticipated, they are rarely even recognized.

hey, don't get me wrong, if the other guys have nukes, then i want to make sure i have them too. but only one nuclear war has ever been fought, and i suspect that experience will do little to prepare us for the next. war is something you do because you have to, not because you can.

I think it was president eisenhower who once said, during the height of the cold war, that "all the effort and expense we have lavished on our nuclear arsenal will be wasted if we ever have to use it."