"Without a compelling threat, an immediate threat," Mr. Spratt said, "I don't think cutting education or the environment is going to work".
Mr. Bush, he argued, had relegated those problems to the back burner, adding that North Korea "was a far more compelling threat in many ways, and it belonged at the top of the agenda".
Mr. Kerry argued in his interview that North Korea "'was a far more compelling threat in many ways, and it belonged at the top of the agenda," but Mr. Bush declined to compare it to Iraq, apart from arguing that Iraq had defied the world community for longer than the other members of what he once called "the axis of evil".
Could the threat of losing a driver's license be more compelling than the threat of living with the excruciating guilt of seriously injuring an innocent pedestrian, a young child?
What makes Counter-Strike so compelling is the threat of death that hangs over the player.
On July 2 Grosscup issued an order preventing ARU leaders from "compelling or inducing by threats, intimidation, persuasion, force or violence, railway employees to refuse or fail to perform duties".
But Eliyahu Stern's comparisons to 19th-century Europe are not compelling because the perceived threat from Shariah law is not primarily connected to American Muslims (as the perceived threat of Jewish law was primarily connected to European Jews).
But when it comes to American citizens, there must be compelling evidence that the threat the citizen poses is imminent and that capturing the citizen is not a realistic option.
Ferguson was using arrest warrants "almost exclusively for the purpose of compelling payment through the threat of incarceration," according to the Justice Department report.
A compelling explanation, however, involves the threat that legislative change poses to the various agencies' powers and budgets.
The MP for North Norfolk, Norman Lamb, told the conference that Mr Blair's dossier did not provide "any compelling evidence of an immediate threat and no justification for pre-emptive action".
