an "intelligence failure;" all intelligence failures are coupled to policy failures}. Conversely, the Commission's efforts to improve WMD intelligence cannot be fully realized unless and until the U.S. government creates a clear and comprehensive counterproliferation policy and program. Intelligence cannot supply the policy customer unless the customer articulates its demand; see tasking and directing the intelligence cycle. The principles expressed here are realized in the interagency NCPC, its CIA component (the WINACC), the DTRA, and the ISN/CPI. WMD transfer A second frame for the Commission's work involves the risk calculus associated with WMD. This is referred to in a Foreign Affairs article as the "Rumsfeld Challenge." United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld became convinced in the course of his work on ballistic missile proliferation before he took office that adequate intelligence on WMD programs is simply unlikely to be present in many cases Given the stakes, he concluded, the U.S. must assume the worst in formulating its policy responses. This logic, stated originally as "Rather than measuring how far a program had progressed from a known starting point, the Commission sought to measure how close a program might be to demonstrating the first flight of a long range ballistic missile. This approach requires that analysts extrapolate a program's scope, scale, pace and direction beyond what the hard evidence at hand unequivocally supports." and encapsulated by Belfer in the maxim "absence of evidence [of WMD] is not evidence of absence," was the main intellectual argument in the Rumsfeld Commission report leading to the deployment of a National Missile Defense. The maxim was phrased in yet another way by Senator Jon Kyl: "So instead of being surprised at surprises, the Rumsfeld Commission report says we need to get into a new mode of thinking to understand that we should not be surprised by surprises, and that we should base our policy on that understanding." According to this maxim, intelligence regarding the timetable for the development of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) threat originating in Iran or North Korea was uncertain enough that it was deemed imprudent for the United States merely to be prepared to deploy a missile defense within a few years (the Clinton administration policy), but instead necessary to undertake deployment immediately. Conventional arms distribution Proliferation of conventional weapons The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons covers: Non-detectable Fragments -- Protocol I prohibits the use of "any weapons the primary