>The real question is, what would they do in the breach? It seems to me the
>Bush crowd is balancing the same concerns as the Clinton people were -
>reserving the nuke option in the event we got into a sticky battlefield
>situation vs. the prospect of morally discrediting the US and breaking up
>its alliances as a consequence. I don't think the Bush people would end up
>acting much differently than the Clinton people.
Maybe not, but there seems something different, and scarier, about their trying to prepare us for their use. Sure, the Strangeloves of yore threatened, and might have nuked a recalcitrant enemy, but the official posture was always ambiguous and cautious. If Hartung is right, and this is the victory of a formerly marginal strand of right-wing thinking going back at least 20 years, then the lunatics have taken over. Even Nixon looked saner than this.
Doug