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Wow, two completely different questions asked this thread. Akin to "which way to Cucamonga" and "do I look fat in these jeans", although I doubt I'll get in trouble with the wife for answering the two posed here like I would for answering one of the others.
1) Helen Thomas is not a savior and doesn't belong on a pedstal. She's a good journalist, but don't iconisize her. I doubt she would appreciate it. She's always been known for asking the tough questions, regardless of who's in office, and she's certainly made more than her fair share of press secretaries nervous. She's the kind of journalist that I like, the kind that isn't interested in fluff or the bright shiney thing. There are liberal and conservative reporters that fall for that kind of thing all the time, but Helen seems fairly immune to it.
2) Given our overextension in the Middle East right now, I can't believe that we'd risk starting another "hot" war in the region. If we did, it could mean that we'd have troops stretched over roughly 2000 miles of territory (assuming that the air campaign heated into a ground campaign, which isn't that much of a stretch for me). We don't have the troop strength to maintain the commitments we have now, let alone expand it. I think that an air campaign would elicit an armed response from Iran, although whether it would be conventional or terrorist-based, I don't know. Remember that Iran is admittedly one of the prime backers of Hamas, which is an admitted terrorist organization. I don't think that the Iranians have the wherewithall to recruit US Muslims (I doubt anyone does), but they could potentially send Jordanians or Palestinians (or whoever else) to do their dirty work for them here.
A tactical nuclear strike might be the worst strategic decision I think that the Pentagon could possibly ever make. The use of nuclear weapons basically undermines all the negotiations of every administration back to Eisenhower and possibly the later Truman years. The Israeli's don't have the ability to make a strike that far from their home territory, and the US tacit approval necessary for such an overflight of Iraqi territory would be nothing more than taping a target to our backs for the Muslim world at large. It would roughly 1500 miles round trip, and the Israeli planes would probably need to be refueled somewhere along the way.
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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo
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