Having one of our cities nuked is bad enough but something that worries me almost as much is the response by our government. President Bush responded appropriately when he launched the counter-attack against Afghanistan after the 9/11 outrage. Remember how President Bush gave Mullah Omar 3 days to surrender bin Laden before initiating the counter-attack? Also remember how Mullah Omar counter-proposed to try bin Laden before a kangaroo court under Islamic law (a counter-proposal that President Bush quite correctly ignored). This sort of rapid interplay of ultimatum followed by a propaganda response is a hint of what we'll see after New York or Los Angeles disappears under a mushroom cloud. The President would almost certainly have some intelligence about who provided the nuclear weapon. The President will issue an ultimatum. The ultimatum will require a very short response time because another nuclear weapon could go off at any moment. What will the President's ultimatum be? Now assume the President's military action involves a nuclear counter-strike (using Cold War era nuclear weapons designed for Mutual Assured Destruction and totally inappropriate for a limited nuclear counter-strike). What will be the political response to the President vaporizing a large chunk of real estate and creating a huge fallout plume in the process. This is a huge loose end. The current political process is unequipped to deal with the prospect of nuclear terrorism (the silly nonsense that we've seen from much of the left concerning Afghanistan and Iraq is clear evidence of this). If Pakistan's goverment fell to Islamic fanatics (there's plenty of them in Pakistan), there could be nuclear weapons available for terrorism within a matter of days. If firm action is not taken against Iran's nuclear program, there could be nuclear weapon's in the hands of terrorists within 3 years (a rumor recently appeared on the Internet that bin Laden is in Iran with the permission of the mullahs). Of course there is always the possibility of loose nukes from North Korea or ex-Soviet nukes. We live in very "interesting times". The United States needs to develop a public strategy about what we are going to do when one of our cities gets blown away by Islamic terrorists. If there is no public plan in place then it is quite conceivable that the Constituiton and our civil liberties could be suspended.

Gary