Bad precedent, if true.
Right you are. If this is accurate, the kidnappings should rise quickly. And that ain't good.
Bad precedent? Maybe, but these women were captured by "westerners". Releasing them to their men is a virtual death sentence. And it is cheaper than randsoming that lovely girl as most European nations have done with their hostages. I'd put it in the "null effect" column.
The damned thing is that Ms Carrol has that All-American thing and look about her that could really destroy public opinion over the war if she was killed and then had a taped release, now we have to live with the evil to come over more kidnappings and more demands. Pickle it is, I hope our guys made the right decision.
I heard that these females were set to be released.
THIS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE REPORTER.
IF IT HAD TO DO WITH THE REPORTER THEY WOULD HAVE RELEASED THEM ALL.
THIS HAS NO CONNECTION WITH THE REPORTER
"Bad precedent, if true."
Very bad if true. Iraq is already a madhouse. It'll get a hundred times worse if terrorists think these tactics will be effective.
They interviewed an author on FOX News today who wrote a new book called "Imperial Hybris". The author claims that both political parties are being disingenuous with the American public in leading them to beleive we can we win a "sanitized" war with minimal civilian damage. He noted that we did not think this was with Dresden and Hieroshima.
I believe the author is correct.
We are involved in a life and death struggle with a fanatical enemy determined to kill as many of us as necessary to impose a totalitarian religious theocracy on the world. We need a mindset that meets theirs, i.e. a determination to kill as many people as necessary in order to stop them.
We demonstrated in Fallujah that concerns for "innocent" civilians are a greater priority than crushing the life out of them and those who may support them in any way.
This is merely another regression into what the author implies in that book. Thanks to John McCain, we are unable to exert the kind of psychological and physical leaverage necesssary to resolve issues like this successfully.
The proper way to deal with hostage situations like this is to intensify our efforts to locate these fiends, using whatever physical force is necessary againt whatever people we have in custody who may be linked to them, and then destroy them as soon as we locate them. In the event we are unable to accomplish this, we should make it perfectly clear to them that should they carry out their threat, we will select ten of the individuals that they are seeking to liberate through this blackmail, and whom we have in custody, at random, and hang them. And if the journalist is murdered, DO IT.
We can't expect to employ philosophical techniques honed after centuries of civilized evolution on people who still have a pre-Medieval mentality.