The idea that we would eliminate now our capability to dealwiththem down the road is transparently a political decision, not a national security-minded one.
And the danger is that Iran's leaders are concluding that the lesson to be learned from Syria and Libya is that the way to dealwith dissidents is to crush them ruthlessly, and that the way to prevent the Western military intervention now plaguing Libya is to finish developing a nuclear weapon to deter it.
Is that a, is this a litmus test of how the now Democratically controlled Senate is going to dealwith Bush nominees and that you're going to fight them on ideological grounds?