ElB is, I think correctly, pointing out that merely attacking the facilities needed to make bombs will not indefinitely prevent a country from acquiring them.
Conquering, occupying and remaking a country may precipitate changes that indeed eliminate a country's desire to get The Bomb. Or it may not, depending on the effectiveness of that remaking. The remaking of Germany and Japan worked primarily because the racist and militaristic ideologies of those regimes were so utterly discredited by their total defeat. Our modern "kinder, gentler" precision warfare is much less destructive to civilians and even to the enemy's military and political infrastructure, which in Iraq was largely broken up rather than destroyed.
This less-lethal approach to war may paradoxically prove in the long run to be less kind and gentle. Leaving people the illusion they can defeat those they can't defeat does them no favors. Hitler rose to power largely by claiming that Germany wasn't "really" defeated. Nobody could conceivably claim the same after WWII. And nobody has.
In the wake of the Iraqi mess, it seems unlikely that American will, at least in the foreseeable future, attempt a conquest of another close-to-nuclear power, such as Iran or perhaps North Korea.
We are thus faced with three highly unpalatable choices:
Attempt ongoing missile or bombing strikes on facilities to interrupt the program, assuming we can locate them, which the accuracy of our intel on Iraqi WMDs makes unlikely. This is the approach ElB says, I believe accurately, is not likely to be effective in the long run.
Allow Iran to acquire nukes, which we can reasonably expect willsoon be used against either the US, probably through terrorist surrogates, or Israel.
Nuke Iran and thus destroy it as a society without invading.
"Nobody could conceivably claim the same after WWII. And nobody has."
Beg to differ. There are a lot of Japanse who maintain that the Emperor merely called a temporary halt to hostilities so that Japan could recover for its next try.
One of those was former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, who was said to be so tight with Ronaldus Magnus. He wore funeral garb every day for ten years after the war ended, and has never admitted that Japan was defeated. The problem, according to him, was that the people failed to support the Emperor with adequate fanaticism.