Ed Kyle wrote:
Once operational, the greatest rouge 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.

ICBMs cost a lot of money - apparently much more than their warheads.
Even the US can't justify putting conventional warheads on them because
it's too damn expensive. Who else is going to be able to afford to do
it. And in a world where ICBMs are only used to carry nuclear
warheads, who is going to take the risk of launching a bunch of them at
the US, hoping that we sit and take it?

Then, avoiding the issue of what parts of the US one could threaten
with 50-mile-range artillery rockets, we certainly wouldn't use the NMD
against them.

And finally, artillery rockets are easy and cheap to make and hard to
trace. ICBMs (or even IRBMs) get made in expensive factories and are
pretty simple to identify. Launching a bunch of them at the US would
certainly justify having said expensive ICBM factory blown to bits, and
probably a bunch of other military production facilities as well.

-jake