If there's a serious question here, it would be: in the case of a terrorist nuke attack on the US, what doctrine should replace the old Cold War nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction?
Remember, under M.A.D.'ness, the policy was: if you nuke us, we will wipe you out. Specifically, we would target anything and everything that could produce weapons of war. "Bomb them back to the stone-age," we said.
Well, guess what? Our terrorists already live in the "stone age," so to speak. They like it there. They don't care what or who we bomb. They want to die martyrs' deaths. So they say.
So what do you do? Well, there really are not a lot of options. One of them is just what President Bush is already doing in Iraq & elsewhere.
But another is to ask, is there something they really do value, which could seriously motivate them to get their lunatics under control? I'm not saying that's the right answer. But note again the French president has already put Iran on notice -- don't mess with France.
Think about that! The French are talking tougher than we are!
If any country nuked us, we would respond. It’s a little more problematic if the nuke doesn’t arrive on the end of a missile where you can track its origin right away.
A nuke is detonated in Boston. No missile. It somehow got into the country, or was acquired within the country, or something. You don’t know.
The response is not to blow up 1/4 of the planet. Fighting terrorism is hard and the answers not easy.