One bright afternoon in June 1981, Israeli F-16 jets streaked low across the Iraqi desert. Spotting the gleaming domes of the unfinished Osiraq nuclear reactor, the pilots decimated it with bombs – a bold preemptive strike in the name of self-preservation.
The world reaction to the strike was swift and critical, with the United States and the rest of the UN Security Council unanimously condemning it. But now, two decades later, the Bush administration – warning of time-bomb terrorists and the spread of deadly mass weapons – proposes a far more open-ended, sweeping use of preemptive force than Israel`s. Full Story
