I wouldn't rule it out. 9/11 showed how defenseless we really were and not much has really changed in the grand scheme of things. Sure our airliners are more secure now, but if we can't even keep illegal immigrants from crossing the border, how would we prevent a terrorist with a dirty bomb? That's particularly terrifying to me since I live in Phoenix - one of the first major US cities that would be found after crossing the American-Mexican border.

Depends what you nuke.
If things kept heating up with Pakistan then they could lob a nuke at one of our military installations - assuming we have any far enough away from population centers. It would be a purely military strike and definitely send a message. And if civilian deaths are minimal then a lot of the world might just look the other way, given our international reputation right now.

"Nuke" is more generic than you think, perhaps. "Nuke", being shorthand for "nuclear", covers any device that's based on fission or fission/fusion. Even the original Atomic Bombs qualify as "nukes" despite their weakness compared to modern nuclear weapons.

It's not as destructive in the physical, blow everything to hell manner...but a dirty bomb in a large city is potentially just as damaging to the area is if you leveled it.     If you Irradiate the core of a city, that area becomes a dead-zone for many many years.  It may not immediately kill as many people...but financially could devistate the economy of a city if you detonated it in the right place. 

And Rik, I think that even a small nuclear attack on military installation would definitely get the worlds attention.  Not so much because of the incident at hand, but because of fears that the precedent would set.  Terrorist group A sets of a bomb....World shrugs it off...Terrorst group B is now emboldened to do the same to whomever thier enemies are.  The major Governments of the world aren't going to let that happen....Swift and terrible justice will decent on the poor bastard who thinks he can get away with it.

For some reason for your concern over most of these terrorist assholes, the dept. of defense has an agreement with pakistan that if our forces are engaged with militants or key operators in the area that we can pursue into their nation.  As far as women and children, its been happening for a long long time. These guys move their families around with them. They do this for 2 reasons, one is for cover, they may appear to look like just a bunch of native people roaming about, the second reason as far as I could tell, is to prevent U.S. Strikes from happening since we live with morals and guidelines that make killing of civilians immoral.  The media shows everything on how they want the public to see it.  Ive have seen women and children learning and operating inside terrorist training camps and Ill be one of the first to point out, I placed some of that ordinance there. 

Or maybe they want to be with their families.
Last I checked there are military families that live on our bases. Guess what could happen to them if the base is attacked.

Maybe I've just always been on the ignorant side... but since when does the CIA have military assets? Apparently the action that started this all was lead by the CIA, and now there was a drone operated by the CIA? Isn't the CIA suppose to deal simply in intel, handing that to the military to act on?