Pure conjecture. No one knows what ultimate effect it would have. We can only offer conjectures.
Some things do seem self-evident. Would it anger the Muslim world? Of course it would. It might also break their spirit completely and utterly. And even if it angered them would that mean they would rise to crush the west? That's very doubtful. They don't have the means to pull off a vigorous response on a grand scale. They are not superhuman. They just believe Allah has given them world-conquering destiny. We ought to disabuse them of that vain notion, the sooner the better. If we can do it without detonating a single bomb, that would be the best result of all. We pulled if off with the Soviet Union in no small part because they knew we had the greatest and grandest of Russian history and culture on our target lists.
Any conflict that escalated to the point of our using nuclear weapons in response would be to-the-death; hurt feelings and our reputation with the French would be the last things we would be worrying about.
You and Dane are quite similar in that you unfairly minimize and cynically discount the extreme conditions that were propounded to Tancredo. He wasn't flippantly suggesting that we bomb Mecca just because we can. He was addressing the question in terms of a response for a grievously wounded America unsure if Islamists still had other nukes hidden away for followup.
If you want to appear balanced and fair, you owe it to Tancredo not to twist his words out of context.
That's an impossible task for Dane. It remains to be seen whether you are more capable.
He's not. Anybody that thinks America should never use it's nukes and continue to pursue a conventional war after a terrorist nuke strike is incapable of reasoned debate.
Government is forbidden from discriminating. I'm not. These are the times that make me wish that Free Republic had a poster filter. Dealing with obvious trolls can even be amusing. Dealing with obvious paid plants is not.
JR has his standards for dealing with disruptive posters and the neurotic and generally it is effective, but it's not perfect.
Repeating the same inane statement ad nauseam might be a very effective torture technique in Hanoi but contributes nothing in a forum for the exchange of ideas.
All right already. You tried your technique and it's been generally rejected. Try something fresh.
Becoming a parody of yourself simply raises questions of motivation.