If Al Queda nuked one or more major US cities...lets say Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago...(Just to spread the pain). The war on terror would be completely lost.

It would force the US to completely abandon its values with regard to maintaining a free and open society. It would also cause the US to impose a strategy of complete world domination. There would be no more free press around to complain. This is something neither the US or the world currently wants. Only lunatics and sadists would want such a thing to occur. But the US would have no choice (unless its surviving citizens were so changed by the event that they were willing to accept living in a perpetual police state).

Humanity would survive, and probably eventually prosper again in 20 or so years...But in the meantime, American values would go out the window. Millions more, perhaps billions more would die... A price that nobody I know is willing to pay.

Scott Evil