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"you refer to our hypothetical use of biological weapons as 'counterforce'; this is not correct"

It began as a typo, then I realized it was absolutely correct. Historically, counterforce methods have relied on identifying loci of enemy weapons in order to strike them preemptively. But enemy biological weapons do not have "signatures" like silos, separation centrifuges, security perimeters. They could be built in the basement of a mosque, in a high-school lab or a 40-foot container. What sort of counterforce weapon would have the persistence and coverage to reach that? Look at the problem another way: why would the United States, the possessor of thousands of nuclear weapons, be interested in biological weapons at all?

Because they exceed, in certain respects, the destructive power of nukes. In particular, they have the potential to exterminate virtually every Muslim man, woman and child. Islamic civilization as the Maya. Smallpox, for example, which can be spread by aerosol and which posseses a 12-day incubation, can seep into every crack, crevice and hovel in the Middle East. If a WMD factory in every mosque and slum is weapons dispersal taken to an extreme then countervalue taken to its limit becomes counterforce.

This proposition is so monstrous as to resemble the ridiculous plotline from Rainbox Six. It is as ludicrous as the idea of an airplane crashing into the Capitol in Debt of Honor. Yet it is technically feasible. And Saddam is working on doing it to us. Every American dead and Islam the proud posessor of an undamaged United States. The freeways will be perfectly usable. He is well aware of the requirement "to determine the identity of an attacker when an attack occurs", as you so aptly put it -- and of the existence of deniable proxies.

Our mores and traditions are not a death pact. We are moving into uncharted ground, requiring new modes of thinking. Historically, the US did not possess a coherent framework on the use of nukes until the 50s. The words "deterrence", or "counterforce" were all invented to think about the unthinkable, because the pre-Atomic age did not have the logical primitives to deal with these extreme concepts.

My sole consolation lies in the conviction that our leadership is fundamentally sane and will not employ these methods except in extremis, when all your other considerations, such as world opinion, etc, lose their meaning. But it is not the American way to have an empty holster going into a gunfight, especially when you know what is ranged against you.

What you're saying is that there can be no counterforce method that's effective against biological weapons, stashed and distributed secretly in the targeted country. (In fact, it's difficult even to target production factories and laboratories, since they can be mobile and, in general, much smaller, less expensive, and easier to hide than comparable nuclear facilities.) Once again, the only defense is the certainty of retaliation, however difficult that may be.

But your discussion of smallpox is flawed, because, contrary to your suggestion, there is no known method of limiting the target to Arabs, or to Americans, or to any other group of people. Whoever uses such a weapon must realize that it will devastate much of the world, including countries completely uninvolved; the world will unify against anyone who uses such a weapon. (The only way around this that I can see if the perpetrator of the action can be kept secret, or if one could get one's enemy blamed for the attack. Such a strategy would be very likely to fail, however.)

One can imagine anthrax, instead of smallpox, used in the capacity that you suggest; since anthrax is not contagious, it will not spread to areas other than the intended target. But then there is no need to vaccinate one's own civilian population, invalidating your original argument.