If any of the pieces kill someone, the response by the government would be interesting. If it kills a non-American, it would be more interesting. If it kills a declared ally, extremely interesting.

And if it kills a citizen of a country that hates the US? In that case, I've finally got something in the news that interests me and isn't science related.

Not that I want anyone to die, but if they do, I certainly want to read all the juicy details. The doubletalk in other words, doubletalk is very entertaining to me.

The US has had anti-satellite rockets for many many years, they have one that fires from fighters and was tested successfully. and they reportingly also have dormant sleeper satellites that are designed to seek out and destroy other satellites in case of war (although information on those is sketchy and they might have discontinued that system after the cold war). 
Furthermore neither the US nor russia (who reportingly also developed such a system) nor china would 'nuke' a satellite since it was found that just flying into one without any kind of explosives was deadly effective.
And nuking things in low orbit would be pretty disastrous, for many reasons, think radiation, think EMP, etcetera. And would hopefully create an international boycott and ban on any insane country trying that.

damn, too slow. 
fishbone beat me to the punch

As long as it misses Chili it won't get hot.

... that in the tests where the Chinese 'shot down' a satellite it wasn't totally destroyed but just damaged to the extent that it no longer worked. The USA is already capable of doing the same thing but this is a long way from actually turning the sat into lots of little pieces that would burn-up during re-entry.

In these sat shoot-down tests they don't go for a direct hit but for a proximity detonation that sprays shrapnel at it. Although sats have to be radiation hardened it's impractical to actually cover them in any sort of ballistic armour - that's just extra non-functional weight to be lifted into orbit - so a spray of debris in close enough proximity will stop it from working.

To destroy it by a direct hit you'd need a much larger missile to carry a warhead big enough to do the job and all the extra gubbins needed for a more accurate interception. As there's no military need to physically destroy satellites - just stop them from working - the extra costs of making a total destruction missile aren't justified and no one has pursued it.

If they knew where it was coming down it and wasn't so large then the Patriot missile system might stand a chance of hitting it but they don't and it is, so no joy there.

In summary, all anyone could do at this point in time is stop it from working, which is exactly what the situation is right now.

I am not a rocket scientist.

Blasting the satellite will only create a bazillion high velocity bits, many going into higher orbits and all getting scattered, so that LEO becomes useless.

What the hell are you thinking?

While the US seems completely incapable of shooting down an object as such; even when it's got a predetermined path and rate of descent(missile shield? hahahahah) The Great People's Republic seem to have this worked out and have already successfully knocked one out of the park. 

My advice, swallow your pride Yankees. Get on the horn and give your 'technologically primitive' brothers of the East a holla.

Sure they'd never let you live it down. 

Come to think of it neither would the rest of the world, or your citizens, or their dogs, or your Go.. 

Oh, who am I kidding, a humbled American Military? Since they'd never do such a sensible thing, so allow me this:

HA HAHA HA HAHA HA HA HA! HAHAHAHAHA HA HAAAAA!!!!

"And we know there is at least some percentage that it could land on ground as opposed to in the water"

Given that the earth's surface is 2/3 water, would that percentage be around the 33% mark by any chance?

Aren't they still looking for pieces of Skylab? With all the crap zipping around, up there, it's amazing that this doesn't happen once a month. My biggest worry is that it's one of those, whaddaycall, top secret thingies. Maybe time to invest in a copy of the Zombie Survival Guide.

I have an excuse to get a new catchers mitt.

Hey batter batter batter batter, SAwing batter.


They could always ask the Chinese to nuke it with their earth to orbit satellite killer rockets... ;-)