Just curious..why?
Call me old fashioned and trusting, but I sure would think that if there WERE nukes and we were about to lose a city or more that we would be at RED and that the "good guys" would care more about human life than politics or expenses.
IMHO, we'd have NEST teams going door-to-door. We'd be torturing AQ prisoners (yes, off-shore). There would be MUCH going on. You don't just sit back and let someone take out a city, unless you REALLY want political problems..