[caspera]

Picture it is Summer, 2001. Let's say someone told you that terrorists were planning to blow up the World Trade Center and that the only way to prevent it would be to go to war with Afghanistan. You would have dismissed such a person with exactly the same arguments you are using now. You would have been wrong. What 9/11 should have done is shift the burden of proof of innocence onto the Islamists and the Pan-Arabians.

You are demanding a level of forensic proof that is impossible to provide given the circumstances. There was absolutely no proof whatsoever that the Germans were exterminating the Jews other than the fact that everyone was pretty confident that that was what was going on. Proof - incontrovertible proof - of the planned crimes of fascist regimes can only come after we invade them or after they attack us. That is nature of the world we live in. The stakes of the game after 9/11 are so high that wating to find out what people like Hussein are going to do next has suddenly become the worse option.

The U.S. was never able to pin anything other than tax evasion on Al Capone. Imagine the difficulty if Capone had had his own country. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a fine principle to apply to an individual. It is a terrible principle to apply to fascist regimes pursuing an atom bomb.