Ed Kyle wrote:

Once operational, the greatest rogue threat might be the use
of conventionally-armed missiles against the U.S., something
like the rain of missiles that fell on Israel recently. Such an
attack would quickly deplete an anit-missile system and it
would be politically impossible to respond to it with nuclear
weapons.

First of all, if any Power chose to launch a "rain of missiles" at
American cities, we would certainly respond at least with a
counterattack on the enemy's strategic targets including their missile
launchers; we might respond with unrestricted conventional bombardment
of their cities, if sufficiently provoked.

Secondly, I don't believe that it _would_ be "politically impossible"
to respond to such an attack with nuclear weapons. Israel can't do so
because they don't want to lose American backing; America _has no_
"America" whose backing she needs.
We are not externally restrained as is Israel.

Given repeated scenes of dead American civilians, the political
pressure on any American President would be quite in the other
direction: to end the enemy attack as rapidly as possible, using
whatever weapons did the job fastest. This might well mean a nuclear
counterattack, especially if we didn't have enough conventional weapons
in range and the attacks were continuous.

You are _seriously_ overestimating the extent to which the American
government, and _particularly_ the American people, care about "world
opinion." In fact, in such a situation, any other countries which
openly protested the American action might do well to be cautious:
their words might be remembered on some future occasion when they
needed our assistance.

After all, the Palestinian Authority paid for their impromptu 9/11
street fair with a strong US tilt against Arafat, and a cutoff in aid
which has caused severe suffering amongst the Palestinian population.
Hope they had a lot of fun on 9-11-2001, and hope the memory of that
fun sustains them as their children die of contagious diseases because
there's no money for the local hospitals

- Jordan