And a fine thread it was too. :)
I disagree.
I don't know who this guy is (sure, I have heard his name) but in the context of what he said, is it that wrong?
If a nuclear weapon were to go off in the center of New York City, how would our government, and the world react? I think the question is a fair one. What do you do?
Do you just pick out a city at random in the Mideast and drop one on it? Do you bomb Mecca as this guy theoretically proposed? Do you do nothing? Millions would certainly die, and do nothing but say "we are going to catch them"?
This guy did not just jump up and say "We should bomb Mecca", he was placing it in a framework of a theoretical situation.
If you think, for even a single second, that nobody in the US government is gaming those situations, you are wrong. Just because it is so horrible we can barely contemplate it doesn't mean it frees our government from the duty of planning for it.
Now, you may not agree with that, and maybe I don't either. But it IS a choice, one that you can be %100 sure SOMEONE has played out. And well they should. Would it be appropriate? I don't know. But I DO know destroying Mecca as an option, is no more or less palatable than destroying a city full of people.
That's because Tancredo's detractors, like Hugh Hewitt, are looking for a hammer to beat him with. They are interested in using this controversy to wreck Tancredo, whom they identify with the dreaded Nativist Border Control Crowd. The Irrepsonsible Right Wing Fringe.
The respectable, center-right, Harvard educated, sissy boy GOP talkers don't like Tancredo at all. He rocks the boat. He's not a Team Player. So this is a chance to wreck him. Truth isn't important here.
Hugh's crowd did much the same thing to Trent Lott back when he praised Strom Thurmond at the old boy's 100th birthday party. It wasn't the mainstream media or the liberal pundits who created a firestorm out of Lott's little toast to Strom. It was Hugh and his pals on the "repectable right" who ginned up the controversy, in order to push Lott out of the way. With Tancredo they are simply at it again.