Richard Perle is a loon. It's easy in hindsight to say a preemptive strike against Hitler would have been better than waiting for him to invade Poland. But predicting the future is not so easily done. A preemptive strike shows what I consider a lack of courage on our part. While not completely foolproof the policy of clear deterrence offers the best chance to prevent the use of WMD. If it is clear that any use of WMD by Saddam will immediately bring his demise he will not use them. Whatever he is, he is not suicidal. If we strike at him he then has nothing to lose and very likely will use his weapons. What is our goal? Removal of Saddam or prevention of a WMD incident? Some people fail to see that these two are mutually exclusive.