Romney Would Retaliate For A Nuclear Attack

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney says that if terrorists detonated a nuclear bomb in a U.S. city while he was President he would retaliate "in a very dramatic and clear way." Posed that scenario while campaigning in a early primary state, Romney said he didn't want to say much more. "The answer is you would retaliate and you'd retaliate in a very dramatic and clear way. I don't want to be terribly more specific than that," the former Massachusetts governor said. "But there's no question that people understand that the reason that we have the thousands upon thousands of nuclear warheads we have is that we intend to protect ourselves. And I would never shrink from protecting the American nation, the American people, nor shrink from retaliation if somebody used something as awful as a nuclear device. We will be safe." The key is preventing nuclear proliferation, Romney said. He cited Iran, which has been accused of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a charge its leaders have denied while claiming it's interested only in a nuclear energy program."It's time for us to dramatically tighten the sanctions on Iran and to get our friends around the world to do the same," Romney said. People in Iran need to know that "going down the nuclear path is a source of peril, not a source of pride," he said. Romney spent Thursday and Friday in South Carolina. In Aiken earlier Friday, he said that he doesn't want the federal government to take over providing health care for the nation's uninsured. "Don't have 'Hillary Care,'" Romney said, referring to a favorite Democrat target, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. He said he doesn't want to "have the guys who ran the Katrina cleanup" in charge of health care and would leave it up to states to design their own systems. Romney said he'd help stop illegal immigrants by sanctioning employers who pay them and oppose so-called sanctuary cities that give illegal immigrants housing and other benefits.