I find the claim of Bin Laden possessing a "suitcase" bomb to be highly dubious. The use of such a weapon would cause major problems when trying to decide exactly who to retaliate against. If a weapon goes off in an American city, the DOE will tell you in 6 months they can have a preliminary report about where it came from.
Aside from that, if Bin Laden is operating in a nation such as Pakistan, who do you retaliate against? A nuclear armed Pakistani government? That is a tough sell to make.
As for Bin Laden not wanting to have nuclear explosions in the Middle East. I would say it depends on who is taking the hit to determine if he would mind. If it was used on Israel, I think he would have no problem. If it was used on Saudi Arabia, I doubt he would have a problem.
If you read his 1996 (the first one) declaration of war, he calls the US presence in Saudi Arabia the worst thing since the death of the prophet. Worse than the crusades, everything. He also holds the Saudi monarchy accountable for this. Listed among his goals are to obviously eliminate the United States, but also the Saudi monarchy as well.
But it could be sane for an extremist group to acquire Pakistani plutonium and then produce a bomb to detonate in the United States. Especially if the group is not Pakistani to begin with. How do you respond to that? Nuke Pakistan? That is not really viable, and an invasion could immediately backfire into nuclear war. There are no good options.
But I can agree. We need forward action to identity and kill these groups to prevent this unthinkable scenario from occurring.
