Cloud 9 -- As Gnostic Yevon says, it's not nearly as hard as you think it is to buy a nuclear weapon. (By the way, it wouldn't be in the form of a missile or bomb, it would be in the form of a warhead. And a nuclear warhead could be no bigger than your torso.) Getting it into the U.S. wouldn't be too much of a problem, they'd simply either have to break it down to core components and transport them seperately to re-assemble it inside the States, or they could slip it through one of our extremely porous borders.

Gnostic Yevon -- While I do agree with your post, your "rules" concerning the validation of the use of torture could cause some problems. In #2, you mention that you'd have to convince a military judge that there's good reason to suspect an imminent terrorist attack. If a terrorist attack is imminent, should we be spending time on courts marshall and other court proceedings, convincing people left and right that it should be done? Of course, we should be as sure as possible about the accuracy of the information we could extract from the suspect, but, simply put, s*** happens. Nobody wants innocent people to be subjected to cruel interrogation techniques, but I would rather 1, or 10, or 100 innocent men be tortured than be partially responsible for the loss of thousands of lives.