think, into the U.N. Charter. And that's the difficult case. TOOBIN: Over here, this gentleman? QUESTIONER: Bart Nichols (sp) -- (inaudible) -- and Associates. Can you talk for a minute about preemptive war versus preventive war and how you see Iraq? And -- because some people view it as preventive and not preemptive. And from what I understand, there's some justification in international law for preemptive actions. MR. : Is that -- sorry. Go ahead. QUESTIONER: The second part is how would you view an attack on Iran, as a preemptive attack or a preventive attack? TOOBIN: Well, why don't you start -- whoever -- by is preventive and preemptive a meaningful distinction in international law? BELLINGER: Well, we hadn't quite gotten there yet. But I think that people are beginning to refine these terms. Three points. One, the -- actually, the legal theory of the Bush administration was not that we were relying on a new preemption theory in using force against Iraq. it was that we were relying on the existing Security Council resolutions which existed for 10 years that authorized the use of force against Iraq to force them to comply with their existing U.N. Security Council resolution obligations. So President Clinton had relied all the way through the '90s, when he was enforcing the no-fly zones or knocking out missile launchers in Iraq -- was he doing that illegally? No. His theory was that the existing U.N. Security Council resolutions gave him that authority. And the