1 Let's see, the Palestians capture of couple of Jews...or Hezbollah does, what's the difference they're on the same side when it comes to hating Jews.  Now we are to believe after months that the official government has no idea where these captives are...yea, right.  I would like to think that Isreal has a team, in the shadows, looking for these men.  Along the way they just might test their weapons on some bad guys.  Let's hope so.  And let's hope they find the soldiers.  Isreal needs every gun manned, sooner rather than later.

2 It is suspected that Gilad Shalit, as well as the soldiers captured by Hezbollah, are in Syria.

3 I think they are dead, and the goal is to humiliate Israel by making them trade live terorists, for dead bodies. "Here they are! Surprise!"
  Now if that happens, I'd say Israel should "over-react". Meanwhile lets keep our prayers going out, if only because I want to be wrong. I like so many others, want to see them come home to thier families.                            USA, all the way!

4 Funny you should mention that.
I have been thinking that Israel should trade 500 terrorists for the 3 soldiers... but they should deliver them with a slow acting radioactive poison in them, something like Polonium-210.

Think Alexander Litvinenko, then multiply it by 500.

5 #4 Kafir.......I second that.......

6 Kafir comes with thought of the day.

7 Kafir
 
Hmmm I rather like the idea, but think a highly contagious disease like Hemorrhagic fever or E-Boli Fever would be much better. Instead of a mere 500 they could wipe the Palestinians out.
 
 
 
 
 
http://www.mp3.com.au/artist.asp?id=16834

8 doriangrey - The difference between my suggestion and yours:

My suggestion targets 500 convicted terrorists, and sends a message that Israel will not be held hostage to terror.
If Israel convicts you of terrorism, you will live the rest of your life in prison... and if an attempt is made to extort Israel (for their release), the penalty will be changed to a death sentence.

Your suggestion has genocide as it's goal, and is completely indiscriminate in who it kills. I do not advocate genocide, nor does any sane person.

9 Today, Kafir's idea is brilliant, but tommorrow, doriangrey's idea may be the tragic necessity.  We are in a war after all, and if we don't start doing more to win it cleanly now, we will be forced to win it dirty later.  You can only afford to fight so long by rules that help your enemy. And there are a lot more of them, than there are of us. Time is on thier side right now. For today, I salute Kafir's brilliant suggestion, and I think it sends a very clear message indeed.
           USA, all the way!

10 Sorry Michael Weaver, but you don't win a war by releasing a virus or disease that will kill your population as well as your enemy's.
And even if it were technically feasible, I think you will find Israeli Jews have a healthy (and personal ) distaste for genocide, having been on the receiving end.

11

Kafir,

with respect to your very proper point of view, no kind of warfare is unimagineable any more. It has all been on the table since Communism got nukes.

Don't read my pragmatic grasp of global germ warfare as being an endorsement of preference. My preference is that we do what is smart now, rather than doing what is a desperate last gasp at the end of history.

Fighting a war with weapons that would kill pretty nearly everyone has been a real possibility for long enough that we need to fit it into our thinking. If for no other reason, it will help us remember why a full scale conventional war can be a merciful thing.

Did you read where I called your idea brilliant? It doesn't change the fact that we are losing the long war when dictators can develop thier own 'germs' and nukes, and we sit back and let them.

The world that doriangrey is suggesting, may become a necessity. A necessity is not a choice, or an option. It is a necessity. It may be that the old Mutually Assured Destruction concept isn't deemed an effective psychological deterent to IslamoImperialism. Some say that. I think it is MAD to discard it anyway.

Some nations aren't populated by suicidal freaks waiting for thier 72 virgins. If you make a credible claim to willingness to employ the deadliest weapons, those nations won't create an existential challenge to you. To threaten your existence is to threaten thier own.

With those nations that are embracing the irrationality of the glorifying death cult, we cannot simply count on MAD, since they seem anxious to die. Realistically, if they do not change course soon, we will face a state that posseses the means to wage global germ warefare, and they will be happy to go to Allah, by using it to destroy the infidel. Tell me how a sane person is to respond to THAT reality. Can you?

I respect the proper humanitarian view you have taken regarding genocide. If everything goes reasonablly well, we will not ever have to deal with anything resembling it. The alternative is something like one of those lifeboat survival situations. The one where someone must die, or everyone will die.

Or perhaps it is simply going to be a question of who can we save? Watch 'The Miracle Mile' sometime. If you know it's the end, who do you try and save? Who do you let go of?

I don't advocate genocide either ... today. If backed into a wall, where I had to chose between whoever 'they' are, and whoever 'we' are, I can't say what I would choose to advocate. I believe if you were really willing to sit down and think deeply about this, you would realize that you can't honestly say so either.

Save something, or lose everything? Maybe you'd choose to let the cockroaches win? Maybe humanity had it's shot?  If on some future day, it is your finger that rests on the button of decision, and you look at the scales being weighed you might suddenly find yourself 'insane'.

The power to commit genocide isn't going away. Realize it will always be there, and its usage can be provoked.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. "
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

USA, all the way!