Christopher Hitchens examines war prevention and pre-emption. In the end he comes to no conclusion. The conclusion that he missed is that sometimes you have to be brave enough and confident enough in your abilities to let the other guy throw the first punch. Our current batch of chicken-hawks are neither. No one is brave enough to say that in order to justify war with Iraq we must suffer casualties at Saddam's hand. We must not become an aggressor based on guess-work. It would be a diplomatic disaster. On the other hand, if we go in after taking casualties we can expect that the players in the region will be openly grateful for Saddam's removal.