One can only imagine the uproar if Rumsfield said this -

...rogue states "could one day point their missiles toward [us and our] neighbours. We could say to those countries: 'Watch out, if you try to carry out your threats we will destroy you before you know what's hit you.'"

What belligerence!  The crude brouhaha!   Naked imperialism masked as destabilizing preemption!   But alas, the quote is a recent one from the French defense minister and I doubt ANSWER will get quite so worked up. 

UPDATE - it's only tangentially related to the above, but this passage was so well-turned that I couldn't resist quoting -

If America is founded on liberty—and on the idea that its preservation is worth great sacrifice—those who steer the fortunes of Western Europe have no strong unifying principle for which they can imagine sacrificing much. Their common cause is not liberty but security and stability; the closest thing they have to a unifying principle is a self-delusionary, dogmatic, indeed well-nigh religious insistence on the absolute value of dialogue, discussion, and diplomacy. This dedication has its positive aspects, but it can also make for moral confusion, passivity, and an antagonism to the very idea of taking a firm stand on anything.15 If, in the view of many Americans, a love of freedom and hatred of tyranny provide all the legitimacy required for taking actions like the invasion of Iraq, European intellectuals, having no such deeply held principles to guide them, turn instinctively to the U.N., as if it existed, like some divine oracle, at an ideal, impersonal remove from any possibility of misjudgment or moral taint.