I fully agree with Brad. Every way that let appear nukes more "harmless" ("they are so small, aren't they cute!") will make their use more likely. Every nuke used in this affair will make a nuclear terror strike more likely, for retaliation. If that red line is crossed, no matter by whom, nothing good can come from this. And the contamination at location would be enormous, as had been discussed some days ago. To say it is under the earth and thus no contamination takes place is simply a lie, proven wrong by the nuclear tests that had been conducted in the past.
From the beginning, since months, I said that some of the facilties are so deeply hidden inside mountains or under the earth that they may be out of reach for conventional strikes, so that for their destruction they must be infliltrated on the ground, or nuclear bombs must be used. It is a real no win-situation. You better should not go by using them, but you cannot be successful without using them.
There is also a philosophical argument. The one who has used WMDs (and that's whart we are talking about, like it or not) in the first cannot argue any longer that it is only the other side being evil in threatening to use them. A defense (and this is what the bad guys are doing from their perspective) against a nuclear striking america from then on will have the argument of defense on equal terms available.
Preventive strikes for themselves against an attacker that so far has not conducted any deed of attack are already a sensitive enough issue. Using WMD as prevemntive tools is violating any sense of logic and reason, and cannot be justified by use of these. Their use can only be explained by irrational terms. And it will only be like this: "we used WMDs, becausae eventually, maybe, we don't know, Iran would have used them if it would have possessed them. One could never argue that they really were used for self-defending reasons, because one will never know if the future really would have hold an Iranian nuclear attack. Talkijng of prventive strikes? Then europe, Russia or china could reserve the same right to use preventive defense to nuke America if ever a fool like Bush should get elected again, a prooven agressor and propagator of aggressive preventive strikes (and in this case someone who then would have used WMDs for this prupose).
Brad is totally right. This door better remains closed. nuclear weapons are no military, or usable weapons. They are political weapons. Their value lies in their threat, not in their use. I think of this americn General or Colonel from the Vietnam war, where this Vietnamese major city had been c ompletely wiped out by B52 and the place looked like a atomic bomb had gone off, and he said into the cameras: "We had to destroy this city in order to save this city." If that is not queer.
Someone said that Bush is excused from threatening with nukes, since he may only conduct psychological warfare. Well, this could be said about Iran as well. From a strategical perspective, Iran has very good reason to want nukes, even more so since nukes is the only guarantee to keep the preventively striking Americans out (as we have learned in recent years you else get accused of having nukes that you do not have indeed, and get attacked). As I already have summed up here:
http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopi...650&highlight=
Funny. Before 2003 and the war it brought, I once said in a debate that after Iraq Iran will come up to be the far tougher political and eventually military challenge. It seems the laughter that I earned back then had gone silent.