INCOMING! OR NOT.

From Strategy Page, via Best of the Web (twelfth item down):

The last of the Minuteman III missiles will receive their new motors by 2008. It costs about $5.2 million to replace the rockets on each missile. The new rocket motors, which have to comply with EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) rules, will have a shorter range than the original motors.

We must really be the only superpower left on earth: The engines on our doomsday weapons have to comply with EPA standards.

The EPA is concerned with the pollution caused by launching our ICBMs, which, of course, would amount to a really really tiny fraction of the pollution caused by the detonations of a counterstrike. So I have to conclude that the EPA does not believe that there will be a counterstrike. That's the only scenario in which reducing the pollution caused by an ICBM launch makes even a little sense.