“”"”"”"”"For all the opprobrium heaped on Bush’s head, if Israel is destroyed by nuclear weapons, that and its aftershocks will be a calamity that will make Bush’s failures appear to be minor missteps by comparison.”"”"”"”"”

First of all, I had no problem with your mentioning of Katrina. Your point was about perception, after all. As to the above point, what people don’t realize is that there is a high likelyhood that Israel would still be able to strike back, and with much greater force than what was unleashed on it.

While Israel may be small, it can’t be obliterated by one or even two nukes. There is a lot of naivete about both the power of individual nukes and the ability of a would-be nuclear power to produce any serious number of weapons in a short time. I’m not minimizing either of these factors, but the hard fact is that Israel likely has the ability to deliver several — even dozens — of retaliatory bombs against a number of targets.

What this signifies is that a nuclear (or major, successful chemical) strike against Israel would be even more catastrophic than most pundits and commenters realize. Expect Tehran and several other Iranian targets to be hit, as well as Damascus and possibly other Syrian locations. Israel may chose to use a few deep-penetration mini-nukes against Hezbollah targets in S. Lebanon as well. I leave it to others to imagine the scenario for the entire Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf region.