Imagine, if you will, the scenario: a rogue state with a vastly inferior military, but armed with ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction, commits an act of aggression against a neighbouring country. As President Bush sends US forces into theatre to respond, the country's genocidal dictator threatens our allies and deployed forces with ballistic missile attack.
Suddenly, almost without warning, missiles rain down on our troops, and pound into the densely populated residential areas of allied capitals. Panic breaks out. Sirens wail as rescue crews in protective gear race to search the rubble for bodies and rush the injured to hospitals. Reporters, mumbling through their gas masks, attempt to describe the destruction, as pictures of the carnage are instantaneously broadcast across the world.
The scene I have described is not science fiction. It is not a future conflict dreamed up by creative Pentagon planners. It is a description of events that took place 10 years ago during the Gulf War.
I vividly remember those events. When Saddam Hussein was launching Scud missiles against Israel, I was sent there with Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger to help persuade Israel not to get drawn further into the war, as Saddam Hussein was seeking to do. We saw children walking to school carrying gas masks in gaily decorated boxes - no doubt to distract them from the possibility of facing mass destruction. They were too young to have to think about the unthinkable. With those missiles, Saddam Hussein terrorised Israeli children, and almost succeeded in changing the strategic course of the Gulf War.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the first US combat casualties from a ballistic missile attack. In the waning days of Desert Storm, a single Scud missile hit a US military barracks in Dhahran, killing 28 of our soldiers and wounding 99. Thirteen of those killed came from a single small town in Pennsylvania called Greensburg. For US forces, it was the worst engagement of the Gulf War. For 13 families in Greensburg, it was the worst day of their lives.
Today, it is appropriate to ask how much better able we are to meet a threat that was already real 10 years ago, and has become more so today. The answer, sadly, is hardly any better. Despite this tragic experience, here we are, still virtually unable to defend against ballistic missile attacks, even from relatively primitive Scud ballistic missiles.
Today, our capacity to shoot down a Scud missile is not much improved from 1991. We are still a year or two away from initial deployment of the PAC-3 - our answer to the Scud, and an effective one - and many years from full deployment. Today our forces in the Persian Gulf and Korea - and the civilian populations they defend - have almost no means of protection against North Korean ballistic missiles armed with both chemical and conventional warheads. With no missile defences, an attack by North Korea could result in tens or even hundreds of thousands of casualties.
To those who wonder why so many of the regimes hostile to the US - many of them desperately poor - are investing such enormous sums to acquire ballistic missiles, I suggest this possible answer: They know we don't have any defences.
It cannot have escaped their notice that the only weapons that permitted Saddam Hussein to make American forces bleed during the Gulf War - the only weapons that allowed him to take the war into the territory of his adversaries and murder innocent women and children - were ballistic missiles.
We underestimated the threat then and we are underestimating it still.
It's time to deal with some unpleasant but indisputable facts. The short-range missile threat to our friends, allies, and deployed forces arrived a decade ago; the intermediate-range missile threat is here now; and the long-range threat to US cities is a matter of years, not decades, away. Our people and territory are defenceless.
Why? The answer has four letters: A, B, M and T.
For the past decade, our government has not taken seriously the challenge of developing defences against missiles. We have not adequately funded it, we have not believed in it, and we have given the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty priority over it. That is not how the US behaves when it is serious about a problem. It is not how we put a man on the moon in just 10 years. It is not how we developed the Polaris programme or intercontinental ballistic missiles in even less time.
The time to get serious is long past. Today, the number of countries pursuing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is growing. The number of countries pursuing advanced conventional weapons is growing. The number of countries pursuing ballistic missile technology is growing. The number of missiles on the face of the earth is growing.
Consider these facts:
In 1972, when the ABM Treaty was signed, the number of countries pursuing biological weapons was unknown; today there are at least 13.
In 1972, 10 countries had known chemical weapons programmes; today there are 16 (four countries ended theirs, but 10 more jumped in to replace them);
In 1972, we knew of only five countries that had nuclear weapons programmes; today we know of 12;
In 1972, we knew of nine countries that had ballistic missiles; today we know of 28, and in just the last five years more than 1,000 missiles of all ranges have been produced.
The countries pursuing these capabilities are doing so because they believe they will enhance their power and influence; because they believe if they can hold the American people at risk, they can prevent us from projecting force to stop acts of aggression, and deter us from defending our interests around the world.
If we do not build defences against these weapons now, hostile powers will soon have - or may already have - the ability to strike US and allied cities with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. They will have the power to hold our people hostage to blackmail and terror.
While we have been debating the existence of the threat for nearly a decade, other countries have been busily acquiring, developing and proliferating missile technology.
We can afford to debate the threat no longer. We are in a race against time, and we are starting from behind, thanks in no small part to the constraints of the antiquated ABM Treaty.