I also think it would be a good time to free Cuba and remove that fascist pig Castro. Find him, drop a couple of BIG bombs on him, destroy their airforce in 5 minutes and set the Cubans free.

The nuclear option should NEVER be taken off the table.

Thoughtful bump.

While this would be an easy thing to do...we should be very careful about letting that Genie out of the bottle. Once we do there are other nations that will justified in doing the same thing anytime they decide to do so.

Complete madness. Please get a grip on your emotions.

Agreed. There needs to be a message that puts the world on notice that we are not to be antagonized. With no counterbalancing superpower, the U.S. can nuke a few of the rottenest apples, setting the precedent for what will happen to other nations that harbor terrorists. We will receive condemnation from around the world but we will shrug it off and tell them where they can stick it. We will get the respect back from many that see us as a giant weakling.

Force is all these barbarians understand and we must PROVE we are willing to use such force. Until we do, we deserve to be the world's laughingstock.

Complete madness. Please get a grip on your emotions.

Factoring in a nuclear option in a situation like this is not emotional. It makes sense.

Sometimes, it takes a 2X4 to the side of the head to get a mule's attention.

I agree Bob - do people realize the fall-out from using Nuclear bombs would affect every living thing on this planet?

There would be nothing to protect once nuclear options were put into action - we would all be dead.

Is this what the people of the US want? I hope not.

i hate t osay this, but our emotions are just fine! we should ALWAYS have the nuclear option. and why should we lose one more american life in hunting these buggers? let the nuclear missiles do the work for us, better than sending in our boys and girls to do it personally. finish these turkeys off for good.

I must agree. As much as I would like to see Bin Laden immolated in a nuclear explosion and the shock appeal that this would have on his brethren, the shock would wear off. Then the unthinkable become thinkable.

From a tactical standpoint, do tactical nuclear munitions offer that much advantage over very large conventional munitions?

These cowards will use nuclear weapons on us some day soon if we don't eradicate them now. We are dammed lucky the attack Tuesday wasn't nuclear. Next time I fear it will be if we don't retaliate with enough might (even nuclear) to wipe them out all out for good.

Sorry, don't buy it.

Do you have any idea how many nukes have already been detonated? Every Nuclear power in the world has detonated at least one, and most many, many more.

The US, Russia, China, France, India, and Pakistan have all detonated bombs. And we're all still alive.

Complete madness.

If that's complete madness, Mr. Burnett, then I shudder to imagine what you'll think of my own composition:

We have been handed our destiny upon a gilded platter.

Christendom stands toe-to-toe with a threat not faced by our civilization since Vlad The Impaler halted the advance of the Turks, leaving thousands suspended on pikes in an open field, for the next wave of invaders to discover - before fleeing back to the pathetic hellholes in which they have festered for more than five hundred years

Since the full magnitude of this atrocity has settled upon me, I have been considering the appropriate response. It seems to me that what is required is something that will turn back the horde, for at least another half-millenium.

We have a choice here, that between coexistence - and the continual murder of our bretheren - or complete dominance, and peace. These "people," radical Islam as a collective, these who circumcise their daughters and later murder them in state-sanctioned "honor killings," these who believe fundamentally in conversion through murder, loathe us with a ferocity that will never be appeased, until we are all on our knees at the appointed times each day, facing Mecca, and until Hitler's genocide against the Jews is complete. Obviously, to any free-born American, this would be a fate worse than death.

Despite their righteous anger, it's doubtful that more than a relative handful of Americans would have the stomach to literally impale an entire army on pikes. Consider the modern version, however, and one would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of Americans who lacked the nerve. It is time for our leadership to finally listen, and bend, to the will of the people.

Save for the tiny sliver of the nation controlled by the Northern Alliance - our natural, once and future allies - Afghanistan must be destroyed. Literally wiped from the face of the Earth. With nuclear weapons.

It is enough that the Taliban has harbored and abetted our most-wanted terrorist. Rather, it should be. Certainly let the evidence come in, as it certainly will, to prove the allegation that Osama bin Laden is behind this atrocity, but even if it does not, this is immaterial. Radical Islam is responsible for this atrocity. Period. No other religious or political faction populated by Arabs carries out terrorist acts upon such a scale. The Taliban is the governmental manifestation of Radical Islam. Radical Islam has demanded a war. Radical Islam must be answered. Radical Islam must be annihilated.

Let there be an ultimatum. Let President Bush clearly state that the Taliban has 48 hours, both to turn Osama bin Laden - and all other suspected terrorists on our wanted lists - over to the United States Marines, which will temporarily occupy Kabul Airport for this purpose, and to completely surrender their government, and all political power, to the Northern Alliance, submitting themselves to whatever justice the Northern Alliance decides to mete out. In exchange for this, their nation will be spared. If they refuse, consequences will be forthcoming, and will be unspecified.

Of course, the Taliban will refuse. There will be much chanting, and declarations of "jihad," and firing of AK47s into the air. The Taliban will spend their 48 hours reminding the world how their U.S. supplied Stinger missiles brought down scores - hundreds - of Soviet MiGs, and vowing to do the same to our F-16s and ATFs. They will remind the world of the decade the Soviet Union spent in their own Vietnam. They will claim the providence of "Allah," and vow to defeat the West in their own personal version of Armageddon.

Forty-eight hours and five minutes later, the Pacific submarine fleet, trolling some five minutes missile distance away in the Indian Ocean, empties their launch tubes of cruise missiles. For the next hour, 100 - 500 kiloton airbursts (to minimize fallout upon neighboring nations) evaporate every populated square inch of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, while liberal CNN foreign correspondents shriek in horror and literally wet themselves at the unending white-yellow light and earthquake-thunder over the horizon, from their vantage points in Oman. The night glows red, and horrifyingly silent, after the last missile finds its mark.

The world is agape, as the Northern Alliance - equipped with appropriate fallout protection airdropped by U.S. C-130s overflying the ash - moves up from their trenches, down into the valleys, and reclaims their ancestral homelands.

The next day, ignoring the stupefied protests of our alleged "allies," and empty threats from the Chinese, Bush picks another nation known to harbor Radical Islamic terrorists. Perhaps Sudan. Perhaps Iran. The same ultimatum is delivered. Forty-eight hours. No negotiations, no extensions. Should the next nation elect to martyr themselves, so be it. They will not. Rather, they will slink back into their holes, and try to imagine why their "Allah" abandoned them, again, to another five hundred years of their miserable fates.

...Why slaughter the innocent, as well as the guilty? ...Why did they? Why the children of Hiroshima and Dresden? Shame to say, kids, but you were born in the wrong place, and your culture picked the wrong God. Good night.

Perhaps just the fantasy of an ignorant, ill-informed bystander. More likely, I believe, the only course of action that will spare our shores from the next attack - this one chemical, nuclear or, worst of all, biological. And ultimately, I believe, the only course of action we shall have left. The only question, is when.

"On My Signal... Unleash Hell."

- Gen. Maximus, Gladiator

Hello, the nuclear option!?!?

We all have to LIVE with the nuclear option even after it's been used...

A surgical strike a la the Israelis -- that's the way to go.

You pro-nuclear hipsters sound, oh so, hip and macho...

How about using your brains instead of your so-call cajones?

I agree Bob - do people realize the fall-out from using Nuclear bombs would affect every living thing on this planet?

Absolutely preposterous. Study for just five minutes on the actual effect of radioactive fallout before posting such idiotic leftist propaganda. As an example: How much fallout, relative to the fissionable material, results from an airburst? Answer to follow.

I think the Russians tried that surgical strike thingy with Afghanistan. They didn't do so well.

Nuke weapons are very specialized, some create tons of damage, no radiation, some others massive radiation, no damage to structures. I'm no expert, but that much I know. The weapons are meant for different types of battles.

Finding Bin Laden would be very difficult, or he could be bunkered VERY deep. A nuke is the only way to extinguish a very deep rodent. Saddam knew he could bury himself deep and avoid carpet bombing. Regular bombs simply aren't powerfull enough when going deep.

The techy Freepers can complete my info...

The nuke option is the key to Pandora's box, but will conventional means eradicate our problem?

At a bare minimum, tactical nuclear capabilites should be used against the bin Laden camps in the desert
of Afghanistan. To do less would be rightly seen by the poisoned minds that orchestrated these attacks as
cowardice on the part of the United States and the current administration.

I say NUKE the Capitals of 5 Arab nations
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria.
Special mention; attempt to destroy the
PLO/UFLP/PA or what ever they call
themselves.  If  TNWs would put Israel in
harms way then use other means to assure
that there are much less Palestinians in the
world to falsely claim they have been displaced.

(We all know that the Bible proves that
Judaism was in the Holy Land thousands
of years before Muslims even existed.)

If anyone else complains make them the
next wave.  If China complains, take them
completely out.  I am willing to die to prevent
watching one cold war end only to have
another cold war against terrorism begin.