Relax, This is Only a Quiz

AN INTERESTING RUNDOWN OF US PRESIDENTS AND MOMENTS OF CRISIS : TCS: Tech Central Station - Take the Commander in Chief Test

JFK (the original one) in the Fall of 1962. The intelligence community gives you aerial photos they believe show Soviet missile installations being built in Cuba. But they do not know how close they are to being operational, whether they are armed with nuclear warheads or whether the crews and workers are Soviet. Do you go on national TV, deliver a withdrawal ultimatum, threaten mass retaliation and set up a naval quarantine, thus risking World War III? Or do you quietly work behind the scenes at the UN, get more information and try to convince the Soviets they've done the wrong thing?

President Bush in early 2003, just months after 9/11 and anthrax. The Clinton administration had indicted Osama bin Laden, citing ties to Saddam Hussein and had bombed a suspected al Qaeda bio-weapons plant in Sudan with ties to Iraq. Czech intelligence insists that 9/11 plotter Mohammad Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague. UN weapons inspectors are being frustrated in Iraq. British intelligence says that Saddam was trying to buy uranium in Africa. Saddam had invaded Kuwait a decade before and had used chemical weapons on his own people. One of the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing had taken refuge in Baghdad and families of Palestinian suicide bombers were paid by Iraq. The CIA Director, originally appointed by Clinton, tells you "it's a slam dunk" that Saddam has WMD. The French, strongly

opposed to war with Iraq, say their intelligence service believes Iraq still has WMD. Russian President Putin, opposed to war with Iraq, tells you that Russian intelligence believes Iraq has plans for terror assaults on the U.S. Most of the CIA's human assets in Iraq have been discovered and murdered. Do you wait to get more spies into the country to confirm the other intelligence? Or do you go to Congress for a resolution supporting the use of force and then use force?

Bonus Essay Question: President (Plug in Name of Your Choice) in February 2005. The CIA and South Korean and Japanese intelligence agree that radio traffic and satellite photos of North Korea, where no one has human spy assets, is facing a famine and that it has massed troops to invade South Korea in a few days, after smuggling a nuclear bomb into a major Japanese city to blackmail Japan and the US into giving them a free hand. What do you do?

Well, what do you do?

UDATE: Anderson's answer in the comments is a start:

"Clandestinely drop a single low-yield nuke on a known NORK nuclear facility. Flood the the media with cries of "nuclear accident," Mother of all Chernobyls, and offers of humanitarian assistance. Simultaneously deploy peace envoys and ninja assassins to the Korean peninsula, and make sure every North Korean diplomat and ship traveling abroad meets with an unfortunate accident. Deny all involvement, and give a speech declaring the revitalization of the economy/protection of the environment/government support of the arts/battle against AIDS, psoriasis, and world hunger to be "Job One." Ridicule France. Next question?

Posted by Vanderleun at July 21, 2004 7:07 AM