Nuclear Retaliation?

Thanks to Judah for the link to this story.

Jacques Chirac stated in a speech last week that terrorist threats would be retaliated against "power centers" of terrorists. The article claims many reasons why he might have made such a bold statement. However, my personal theory comes from discussions with students here. Some of the students seem to think that the reason why no one has attacked France yet is because France didn't get into the war in Iraq. When I reminded them that the US was attacked before the war, they said that we had been there before. But now, the sentiment seems to be that France has a rising Muslim/Islamic population and after the attacks on Madrid and London, Paris seems to be a pretty easy target. In other words, my theory is that Chirac is trying to institute fear as a deterrent. I wonder if he remembers that almost all of the terrorist attacks are suicide missions therefore meaning they aren't afraid of dying. Oh well, no one ever said he was a logician.