-- In a major policy reversal on international hostage-taking, Bush administration officials said Wednesday that the United States might sometimes pay ransom to kidnappers.

Wonder what genious thought this up.
[url]www.cnn.com/2002/US/02/20/us.hostage.policy/index.html[/url]

Idiots

What a moron!  Now kidnappings will increase, only so that kidnappers will have their day in the media.  Big deal...we get them back, we got them back before that anyway!

Great!  Now every two bit hood in the third world is going to start kidnapping Americans.  

Might not be such a dumb idea, especially to announce it.  When the terrorists demand the cash, we give them small bills which have been dipped in a poison.  They touch the money and infect themselves (hopefully their family members too) and die slowly and painfully.

GunLvr

I think the point is to encourage more kidnapping.  Read the full text, it allows the Foreign Service to be more agressive in their involvement with kidnappings overseas.  That means a greater entanglement with the law enforcement and intelegence services of foreign countries.

In short more excuses for US intervention in the affairs of other countries.

Whoa! Conspiracy theory city! I would call that a high risk policy, for sure.

Possible, but I don't believe any of the egocentric, self indulged talking head reporters of the USA popular press would deliberately put themselves at a greater risk for a possible result of a wider war.

I do find the reactions of hypocritical effeminate ultraliberal males and butch ultraliberal females to the brutal murder of one of their own amusing and telling. Kill the perps, is the call to arms, but first torture the perps, is what I saw today on FOX. The talking head lawyers are saying we must kidnap more foreign nationals for the lawyers ammusement and personal enrichment.  

Of course we will be paying ransom.  None of these dead drops for the ransom either--we hand over the cash in a briefcase, you hand over the hostage.  

I have a picture of the briefcase somewhere:

[img]http://www.hkpro.com/image/mp5kcase.jpg[/img]
and another one:
[img]http://www.hkpro.com/mp5kbrieffire.jpg[/img]

God, I hope not....Are we sending a green light to the terrorists?.....That we will negotiate and we will pay?