“It’s kind of like getting out there on a playground, a bunch of kids, getting ready to fight, and one of the kids saying, ‘Go ahead, punch me in the face and I’m not going to retaliate. Go ahead and do what you want to with me,'”
And Obama’s response:
“I would say to them is that if the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff are comfortable with it, I’m probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin,”
It’s hard to argue with Obama’s logic. (Although I have heard that the Secretary of Defense is against certain parts of the policy.)
My assumption is that there is all sorts of behind-the-scenes gamesmanship, and that the information which goes out to us private citizens (which Palin is, let it not be forgotten) is not even half of the story. Nuclear strategy involves lots of game theory, and I figure the information that governments put out is probably designed to influence the behavior of other “players”, rather than accurately describe its own behavior.
