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The author left out the worst part, in my opinion:

The power is out; most stations are off the air. But government transmitters and a few private channels will be broadcasting on backup generators. And everything and everyone, from satellites to Energy Department survey planes to local firefighters, are trying to track the fallout plume. At some point — in minutes with good planning, in hours without it — those little battery-powered radios will come alive with urgent bulletins: where the cloud is drifting, what areas should evacuate, what roads are open, and where people can find shelter or decontamination sites.
Then -- just as the first responders arrive on the scene -- the eerie wail of the Emergency Broadcast System begins again. The annoucer's voice is tight: Long Beach has gone off the air, he reports, and witnesses on the outskirts of Charleston, South Carolina and Houston, Texas are reporting "tremendous explosions and great heat".
"We've got to strike back!" exclaims the Vice President into the pickup of his secure phone. From his sleek black armored SUV in Wyoming the signal leaps to a satellite 22,300 miles overhead, then back down a secure channel to the deep room beneath the White House where the President sits. As the voice comes through the speakerphone, a Navy corpsman is bandaging the President's cut face.
Through the blood in his mouth, the President replies. "Strike back? Against who?"

One terrorist attack of this kind would be a nightmare -- but a manageable nightmare.

That's why the terrorists won't limit themselves to just one.

And they won't put out a press release announcing to the world where to aim the missiles at, either. Instead, the parties who carried out the attack will melt coyly into the background. "World opinion" will force the President to hold off on any "vengeful and arbitrary" retaliation "unless and until the true perpetrators of this disaster" can be "found and brought to justice".

There is no way a U.S. president is going to nuke anybody in reply unless he (or she) is 100% certain that the prospective target was the source of the attacks -- and there is no way a president can ever be 100% certain. And so, with bombs going off in city after city, and no one claiming reponsibility, the president will be required to decide between striking back at "the usual suspects" and facing the outrage of every nation in the world for his "unwarranted and barbarous genocide of innocent people" or concentrating the nation's resources on rescue and rebuilding -- and allowing whomever bombed us to get away scot free.

He (or she) will certainly choose the latter. Politics will demand it.