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Phoenix
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Actually I was sleeping, been tired the last two days, and no time to get online. It's a complex issue for sure.
North Korea I wouldn't really worry about ever launching a direct attack against the US. They know they'd get nuked off the map in response because even if they did hit US cities, the US has plenty of nuclear submarines that are, in effect, invulnerable to North Korea because they have no idea where they are at any given moment. If anything, they'd aid a terrorist state (like Iran or Syria, which they are currently doing) and use them to launch a more clandestine attack. For a "massive launch" the worry is Russia and the Chinese. The Russian government, under Putin who is ex-KGB if lest anyone forget, is becoming increasingly beligerant toward the US, and continues to help supply the US's adversaries in the Middle East with nuclear technology. The Russians have also developed a ballistic missile warhead that can steer in descent so as to avoid interceptor rockets designed to warheads on the way back down to earth. One must wonder what's going through the heads of the Russian military planners. The last I checked, America wasn't in a hurry to go to war with Russia, yet the Russians still seem to consider the US their biggest threat. If anyone thinks the Cold War is over, they need to step back and smell the plutonium. Russia is getting plenty of revenue in the form of oil exports right now, so it's in the process of bolstering it's (previously) disorganized military in an attempt to get back on the old Cold War footing. Putin recently dismissed the head of their nuclear industry and replaced him with Sergey Kirienko, who was a former Prime Minister under Boris Yeltsin. Kirienko is a politician and bureaocrat - not a scientist. Politicians can be bought and coerced much more easily than scientists, and with the Russian involvement with nuclear proliferation in the Middle East it bears watching.
The Chinese should never, ever be underestimated or ignored in regards to military strategy. If anyone is willing to risk a massive nuclear retaliation, it's them. They would probably not be a "first strike" instigator, but they would capitalize on a weakened US should someone initiate a nuclear strike or other severely crippling attack. The fact that during the mid 1990's the US government under then President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright literally GAVE AWAY US rocket technology to the Chinese doesn't help matters, nor does the fact that Chinese spies stole nuclear weapons secrets from Los Alamos during the same period of time. Let's not forget that North Korea has nuclear weapons precisely because Albright negotiated the transfer of a nuclear reactor to Korea in exchange for promises they wouldn't use it for weapons development, but only "the peaceful purposes of power generation" (sound familiar?).
My point is not to lay blame on past administrations, but to point out that the larger nuclear threats of China and Russia would be the focus of any nuclear defense program. Saying you're building laser weapons to fend off "rogue states" is just political smokescreen. The Russians and Chinese know they're the ones the US is concerned with because they're the ones with the capabilities of launching mass salvos of missiles equipped with MIRVs (Multiple Independent Re-Entry Vehicles, or multi-warhead nukes) and wipe out every major US city. A "rogue state" would have to resort to a sneak attack using an unconventional delivery system in order to either escape detection and avoid a direct nuclear or conventional military retaliation, or else to bypass anti-missile defense systems, or to make up for shortcomings in missile technology. It's the same reason Jihadists use suicide bombers. They can't afford electronic guided missiles, so they use biologically guided missiles. It may sounds callous, but that's pretty much what it amounts to. The same would go for a nuke. If you can't fly it in, then boat it in or carry it on horseback or whatever.
My opinion on developing an anti-missile laser system is this: It's too little, too late. The US is vulnerable not because of a lack of military funding, it's vulnerable because of greed. The "free trade" bug that bit under Bush 41 in the form of NAFTA, and the bad foreign trade deals in the 1990's that allowed major US companies to ship their manufacturing facilities overseas to places like China are what have gutted the long-term strategic stability of the US. The US cannot protect itself with borders because it's industrial base is completely outside them. If China were to close it's country down to import and export and seize all factories within its borders "in the interests of national security" the US economy would tank in a DAY. Stock markets would crash world-wide, and the great depression would look like a Sunday picnic in comparison to what would happen afterward. It would lead to either war, or surrender, but either way the world as it is now would cease to exist. The problem is that unlike in World War 2, in which the Germans were defeated because the US launched long-range strategic bombing runs and maintained a completely untouched manufacturing industry, the US cannot out-produce and out-last a country like China, nor can it rely on high-tech electronics if nuclear weapons are involved owing to the effects of the electromagnetic pulse created by such weapons. The Chinese, on the other hand, can mass millions of troops because of their large population, and produce military equipment en masse with their manufacturing capabilities.
So the problem is, in a long-term strategic struggle with the Chinese, it's a lose-lose situation. You can't bomb them flat because all your factories are on their soil, and you can't outproduce them for the same reason. Win or lose, a war with China is economic suicide at best, leaving the US vulnerable to anyone else with an axe to grind even if the US defeats the Chinese militarily. Throw Russia into the picture, and you have a serious problem because, while Russia may back China in a bid to overthrow the US, who the hell is going to back the US against the Russians and Chinese? Surely not the Europeans. Canada is right out, Mexico too, and forget South America. Japan will be more concerned with the Chinese looking at them next, and Australia will stay behind it's ocean and not risk getting involved.
Let's say it happens, and the missiles start flying. Even if you shoot warheads down with interceptor missiles, you're spreading nuclear material all over the place. Also, you can't hit all the missiles. This means mass casualties and infrastructure damage that, if New Orleans is any example, the US is completely unprepared to deal with. Even if the US puts satelites in orbit to knock out missiles as they launch, what are you going to do about short-range submarine strikes? You can't get a laser in the air fast enough to hit sub-launched, ground-hugging cruise missiles and even if you did, they're already over US soil and could be programmed to detonate on any mass deviation of flight, so even if they miss their intended target they still take something out along the way. Blowing up ICBM's in their silos is a thought, but you have to know where they are, and then again there are those damned mobile missile trucks that are a bit harder to spot since they can be anywhere, any time. Then there's the dirty little idea nobody ever talks about -stealth missiles. The Russians have an active plasma cloaking system that can make a plane every bit as invisible to radar as the passive stealth systems the US employs for it's B2's and F117's. Don't think it's real? It's no secret, and Jane's has published on it. How can you hit what you can't see? As long as it has a working inertial guidence system (standard tech for any nuke) you'll never see it coming. Sure, you can see the heat bloom of a conventional ICBM launch, but if it flies to its target using a conventional jet engine more like an airplane...? If I can think of it, someone else already has. If not, I'm missing out on a lot of money. 
The only viable defense against a mass nuclear attack is to ensure it never, ever happens in the first place. The problem is in convincing the other guy he has more to lose than you do if he picks the fight.
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