"So I'm going ask you if you wouldn't mind giving me your assessment of the Russian maneuvers coming up this month, the report that the number of subs in or near the Gulf of Mexico (2 Russian and1 Chinese)..."
It is my opinion that the US is prepared or preparing for any eventuality. In short, our hackles are up. I believe preparations are now in place to deal with a worst case scenario.
This Russian exercise is, in my opinion, no exercise. I could be wrong, but this looks too much like an operational deployment. Exercises can be run on simulators and in limited geographical areas. This Russian-Chinese one is GLOBAL in scope and that has lots of red flags flying for me (pun intended).
I'm sorry, but I just do not think that your senario is in the least plausible...in fact, I think that it is absurd.
Look, what do the Russians have to gain by nuking us? Nothing at all. Heck, the Chinese need our money just as much as the Russians do, and neither is looking to kill that golden goose.
Also, if Al Q really was a proxy for Russia, then don't you think that it would be terribly easy for them to allow their operatives to waltz into one of the local Russian missle silos or weapons plants and borrow a warhead or nuclear material? If that were the case, then there would have been a nuclear explosion here in the US a long time ago.
Now, before anyone flames me, please answer the above questions with a LOGICAL response. I know you guys are expecting the end of the world any day now, but I'd like a LOGICAL response.