- “Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. As President Kennedy said in October of 1962, ‘Neither the United States of America, nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world,’ he said, ‘where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nations security to constitute maximum peril.‘
Lesson: Preemption and force are necessary to solve crisis.
“President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat” (speech at Cincinnati Museum Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, October 7, 2002).
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- President Bush and the Kennedy’s watched Thirteen Days at the White House. “I felt a connection to history as we watched a movie about how his brothers had defused a crisis from the West Wing.” (p. 272-273)
George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown Publishing, 2010).
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