i view this as just 1 of 1000's of plans that the pentagon has in place. they would have plans for every possible war or first strike plans they could think of. remember that when you hear them come out with these things.
ok they may have used depleted uranium already in iraq etc... but i beleve from what you mean is most of the general public will view it as nuclear weapons as we seen in japan at the end of ww2.

i just view it as the pentagon has 1000's of plans in place at any one time to cover every situation, while obviously this plan would be silly, they must have released this info for a reason. maybe some sort of conditioning on there part. you never know today.

This is very similar to the MAD train of thought that was built up during the Cold War. We have nukes, you have nukes, so don't nuke us or we'll nuke you back. The difference, as you pointed out, is that this is not using WMDs to prevent WMD attacks, this is using WMDs as preemptive strikes, to hit first.

Unnacceptable.

Having just started The Art of War last night, let me quote Sun Tzu. "All warfare is beased on deception." Whenever you're fighting, your goal is to confuse the enemy. When you're dealing on such a level as with WMDs, it is imperative your enemy (including prospective targets) have no idea what's going on. Toss that in with the fact that, other than NK and Iran, these groups are subversive, hard to find, scattered, very little is known about them, and very little is definite. You can't wage massive war against these groups, it just isn't possible.

If you use diplomacy for the wrong reason, nothing bad comes of it. If you go to war to prevent an attack, there will be a lot of fallout if and when your intelligence shows up false. If you preemptively strike with WMDs, the fallout (pun intended) would be enormous. Not to mention the US citicizens rising up, but the entire global government would be outraged. It's a stupid policy, and is incredibly unpractical. They HAVE to know that.

I'm willing to bet this is a scare tactic.