Here's Safire's latest column...definitely hits the spot. now you see the sense...eh?

An excerpt:

"The best defense is a good offense." That favorite saying of heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey gets a half-million hits on Google, including George Washington in 1799: "Offensive operations, often times, is the surest, if not the only means of defence."

That's the essence of our new policy of pre-emption as a last resort. If threatened by a regime harboring terrorists or likely to provide them with mass-murder weaponry, the U.S. will not wait to gain world sympathy as the victim, but will defend itself by striking first.

That power to protect ourselves --and our will to use that power --was established in Afghanistan and driven home in Iraq. Dangerous dictators elsewhere as well as fair-weather friends no longer doubt America's seriousness of purpose.

it gets better...