Besides, if you read my Friday piece previewing the Nuclear Posture Review, you know all the important provisions. Even the explicit abandonment of a nuclear reprisal for a non-nuclear attack that’s getting all the attention this morning flows effortlessly from a central shift in strategy I reported Friday: recognizing that the nuclear threat against the U.S. is from proliferation, not merely a nuclear-armed enemy. And once you accept that the danger comes from nuclear weapons themselves, as Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association told me, “That would implicitly eliminate from the roles and missions [any] potential use of nuclear weapons to fight a conflict that begins as conventional or to counter chemical or biological forces.”

Now, you might say to yourself: That’s cutting edge thinking for, I guess, 1993. And you’d be right! But this is nuclear-weapons policy. It’s a frigate shipwrecked on a barrier reef made of oil, tar, superglue and sugarless gum from the sidewalk. You have to wage rhetorical battle for years to move it a centimeter. Cable pundits and opposition leaders freak out about anything nuclear, as if recognizing that we’re not ever going to use these weapons unless we’re hit with them first actually erodes our deterrent. I submit the more important deterrent aspect of what the NPR will say comes from its embrace of bolstering conventional forces — what Adm. Mullen has taken to calling “conventional global-strike capability.” That stuff? Oh, we’ll use that.

You can call it apologetics on my part, but when you’re faced with a juvenile debate, sometimes the bolder policy statements reflect where the outer poles of the debate were a decade ago. Reading that back, I’m struck with the cynicism of that statement, so maybe I need to get out of Washington for a bit. But I regretfully think it’s true, and go forth to find a Discman.