Yesterday the Defense Department released the Obama administration's Nuclear Posture Review [pdf], which outlines the United States' "nuclear policy, strategy, capabilities and force posture for the next five to ten years." The new strategy asserts that the U.S. will not use nuclear weapons on any nonnuclear state, which of course does not include Iran and North Korea—nations the administration is now calling "outliers" instead of "rogue states." China and Russia are also on the list for nuclear attack. There's a lot to pore through in the 50-page report, but former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, with all the regularity of a well-fibered colon, was at the ready with a fearmongering soundbite:

President Obama thinks we can all hold hands, sing songs, and have peace symbols. North Korea and Iran are not singing along with the president. Knowing that, it just doesn’t make sense why we would reduce our nuclear arms when we face these threats. The president doesn’t understand the concept of leverage... Leverage means the other guy has to be afraid of you. I worked for a president, Ronald Reagan, who understood that brilliantly, and that’s how he won the Cold War. You need to appear to be unpredictable. [Reagan’s] State Department understood that you need to create pressure, to create something they’re afraid of. Tell me where Obama has done that.

On the other hand, the National Review also published this reaction from Henry Sokolski, who is, as Ordinary Gentlemen points out, an actual proliferation expert: "Today’s headlines are screaming that the president has decided that the U.S. will no longer threaten to use nuclear weapons against Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) states that are compliant with their NPT obligations and that themselves lack nuclear weapons. This sounds dramatic but essentially means we would not consider threatening to use nuclear weapons against states we never had any intention of ever targeting, such as Brazil... Bottom line: This new, 'dramatic' nuclear-policy change hardly changes anything."

Under the Nuclear Posture Review, an enemy who staged a chemical or germ warfare attack on America "would face the prospect of a devastating conventional military response," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the press yesterday. "I think the President’s new posture review is predicated on the logic of incentivizing good behavior." Preventing nuclear proliferation is the number one priority outlined in the NPR. But the administration reserved the right to reconsider the nuclear option against any adversary whose "development of such weapons reached a level that made the United States vulnerable to a devastating strike."

This wasn't enough for Republicans, who joined Giuliani in predictably painting Obama as a terrorist-hugging pushover. "The president's dream of a worldwide liberal utopia is going to undermine the security of the United States," Rep. Peter King (R-L.I.), the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, told the Post. "It's a very bad decision. It's a unilateral retreat. It's going to make America and the world less safe. And the thought that an American president would tell countries that if they attack us with chemical or biological weapons they don’t have to fear a nuclear response makes no sense at all." John McCain also issued a statement arguing for "directly confronting the two leading proliferators and supporters of terrorism, Iran and North Korea."

And the Daily News turns to Vincent Kasprovitz, 60, a handyman from Staten Island, who opined, "The idea of nuclear weapons has always been, 'If you attack us, we can wipe you out.'" But as the Times points out, "The reality is more complex. If a backpack nuclear bomb went off in Times Square or on the Mall in Washington, the Pentagon and the Department of Energy would race to find the nuclear DNA of the weapon — so that the country that was the source of the material could be punished. But the science of 'nuclear attribution' is still sketchy. And without certain attribution, it is hard to seriously threaten retaliation."