Jihadi John and his video collection.

[Suff]

It's utterly and completely disgusting isn't it MD. Yet, as WM says, those who worship the religion and do not deny or condemn the extremism or the murder committed in the name of that extremism, are complicit in that murder. That makes this a religious war and that makes anyone who supports this kind of action (either by agreement or inaction), culpable of the actions.

The Israeli's have a bombing campaign to try and stop thousands of rockets being launched at their civilians. They try to only target military objectives, yet fail because this same contempt for civilian life is rife in extremist Islam. They are denounced to the ends of the earth by Christian and Moslem alike.

IS murder their way across Iraq and Syria. In the name of Islam and the right of Islam. Condemned by Islam? Dear me no. Lots of silence. Even when they murder hundreds of women and children. Turkey even makes support for air strikes conditional on action against the Syrian regime.

The stated goal of IS is a rampage of murder and atrocities to "regain" the lost Islamic Caliphate. They don't care. They'll murder anyone and everyone to get what they want and they won't stop until they are stopped. In the long run they will cow every town village and city they come in contact with.

There is a precedent for this. It is Vietnam. During that conflict the Americans had their "hearts and minds" campaign. On the other side it was murder your wife and rape your daughters and take your sons to fight in the war. We all know who won that one.

Except that the final analysis the only thing lost was a backward country thousands of miles east of anywhere anyone cared about. If we lose to IS, we lose Turkey, Spain and all of North Africa. Plus the war with Israel would go Nuclear in the final battle.

So what do we do? Bomb a few people on the ground? There are millions more there waiting to be impressed. Or do we fight the fundamental basis of the murderers and make them a pariah in their own back yard?

That's the problem with wars. They leave us the worst of all choices.

I've offered one.

The alternative is two fold.

Put tens of thousands of our own troops on the ground. Fight a war, expensive in lives and equipment for two years. Win the war and then spend hundreds of lives over the next 10 years trying to police a bunch of murdering scum. Only to leave with out tails between our legs, ten years later, having failed and sick of the cost in lives. We've never done that before have we???

Give up and let them get on with it. But, of course, you'll need to give up your holidays in Spain. They won't allow people sunning themselves on the beach and who wants to go to the beach only to be wearing more clothes than we would to work at home??? In temperatures we wouldn't even want to wear a swimming suit in.

We can make this kind of conquest so expensive to the religion that the general population will stop hiding and supporting them. Or we can just let them get on with it.

All we are doing right now is setting the scene for chaos and misery for millions of people. Followed by a 7th century regime of misery and murder over hundreds of millions of people.

All I ask is that you tell me what you would do to stop these people. I've had my twopence worth. I'd hate to have to do it. The threat might even be enough to stop most of it. I'd also support the Syrian government forces to defeat the rebels and stabilise Syria, leaving these scum nowhere to go.

So what would you do to save the millions of lives it's going to cost?

[cromwell]

Trouble is, we are not being told the truth here. Nothing new there then.

Remember how our politicians lauded the glorious Arab spring? How has that turned out then? Chaos in Libya, chaos in Iraq, bombings in Egypt, a murderous civil war in Syria.

There is something in me that says that this was not all a spontaneous uprising, that the West had a hand in these matters. Why were all these tyrants like Saddam and Gaddafi suddenly bad men, when we had been doing business with them for years?

Cameron wanted us to support the anti-Assad rebels - but only the "nice" ones. He doesn't say much about that these days.

It's very tempting to say go get the biggest bomb you can find and drop it on their heads though, because of the never ending "Islamist" atrocities. And it may yet come to that because people are getting so fed up with this issue, and with the knock kneed "give them love not punishment when they return" line that is being pushed now.

[Suff]

The largest designed bomb ever made was the Russian Tsar bomb. Tested at 50mtons but designed to deliver up to 100mtons. It was downgraded because they tested in Siberia and if it was too large the fallout would impact their own citizens.

Given that a 1mton bomb creates a 6km fireball and devastates buildings up to 100 miles away, we can assume that one of these would do for a large proportion of the middle east and kill tens of millions of innocent people.

Quite literally, just like Japan at the end of WWII, only one of these bombs would be required to stop all Islamic Jihad activity permanently. Well until they were able to make them themselves at which time they would certainly drop one on each massive population centre, killing hundreds of millions.

When the bombs were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was determined that the Japanese were going to fight to the last person and they needed a shock to end the fighting decisively. They believed that they would save several million Japanese lives and thousands of American/Allied lives.

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were only 17kilotonnes. Contrast only one trident D missile can carry up to 14 warheads, each of up to 500 kilotons. Hiroshima killed 80,000 immediately and wounded 70,000 more. I doubt they have records as to how many lives were shortened by it.

So I wonder. Does it go like this? It's far too horrific to kill innocent civilians now in response to the beheadings of Western civilians or the wholesale murder of Arab Islamic people. Then, at some point in the future, we finally reach the point where we believe that the cost of allowing Islamic fundamentalism is so high that we have to use weapons of mass destruction to stop them through shock value.

A case of a few hundred now to save a few million later.

Of course we won't do that because it's repulsive.

They say that to kill a person makes you a murderer. To kill 10 people makes you a mass murderer. To kill a million people makes you a.... Statesman....

The hard decisions are exactly that, hard. Because you have a choice and you must pick one. The easy decisions are easy because you left yourself no choice. Inaction will remove choice.

[Workingman]

Those of us in the Forces during the time of the Cold War had plenty of briefings on nuclear weapons. These were not BBc style fakeumentaries or Public Information films - they were facts.

In the early days it was thought that bigger was better, so the race was on for 1, 5, 10, 30 and even 50 megaton wareheads. The trouble was that these ground-zero weapons were dirty weapons and only three or four used by both sides would cause a nuclear winter. Devastating they sure were, and could take out underground command bunkers due to the susb-suface shock waves, but what use was that if there was nothing on the surface to command and control?

It was then realised that a warhead 1/10 of the size could do as much surface damage from an air-blast. The shockwave hits the ground and demolishes everything before it, and the winds it creates behind scatter the debris causing even more damage. At the point of impact the shockwave bounces back and a second front is created. Underneath the second wave is a vacuum, but in front if pushes the winds even faster till it eventually catches up with the original shock wave. Then everything gets reversed as the debris is sucked back in to the vacuum - a double whammy.

Most of the calorific heat and gamma radiation is contained within the shockwave. Anything exposed will either be destroyed by radiation or burned due to the heat. Paper, wood and furnishings will spontaneously ignite kilometres from air-zero, as will those of us above ground. Using more but smaller weapons spread over a wider area will have a more devastating effect than one big one, but without the threat of a nuclear winter.

See what would happen to your neck of the woods from various weapons:
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/classic/

I honestly do pray that these weapons will only exist a a deterrent. If they are ever used I intend to be directly underneath air-zero.

[cromwell]

If we nuke them, I'm sure they would one day find a way to nuke us too.

So perhaps we just say if all Muslims in Europe return to their country of origin, we won't nuke you and you can carry on in the middle east however you want?

Reading that back that is a stupid suggestion that won't ever happen! But honestly, what is to be done? There are Islamist insurgencies in the Philippines (Abu Sayyaf), in Somalia (Al Shabab), in Nigeria (Boko Haram), in the middle east (Islamic State, Al Quaeda), in Afghanistan (the Taliban), in Chechnya, and that's just off the top of my head.

We can't just sit back and do nothing, but what do we do?

Arm the general population? (Mine's a .40 Sig Sauer, thanks.. )

[Suff]

Military nightmare isn't it.

We have all the power any crazed despot would ever want or need.

But we can't us it for fear of the long term consequences.

They, on the other hand have little physical power but an ever expanding army of people to do their bidding with conventional weapons. They will eventually get the original Iraqi chemical stocks (those Saddam bought) and the remaining 7 armouries of Syrian stocks which were already in rebel hands when the UN demanded that Assad disarmed himself. They have no compunction about using any means to achieve their goals and could care less if we nuke some of their people, so long as they survive and can get a few more idiots to do their bidding....

Right now my take is this. Those of the religion feel safe in themselves and feel that it is a no risk option to support the crazies.

Me? I'd like to change that balance. But, apparently, it's insane to think so. I don't like it, but then I was trained to kill people in defence of my country. Not all spiffy nice and stand up and trade shots like the 1700's. Oh no, modern warfare, shoot them first, from cover and keep killing them till they can't do any more damage. Then, once you have totally destroyed them, give aid and succour to those who are left.....

Believe it or not, that is the military maxim our country follows. We just don't use it very often. The Army are not police. The Police are trained to protect and to stop violence. The Army are trained to see people as targets and to kill them. It's why making the Army a police force is a really bad idea....

Fortunately for me, France is becoming massively intolerant of Moslems who are even slightly right of centre. Eventually they'll leave and go to the UK where the "good tolerant" people live. Then their extremist kids will go about killing the "good tolerant" people.

Ain't tolerance a bitch...

[Workingman]

Not keen on autos, much prefer a revolver, simpler and more reliable.

Not bothered about the calibre so long as it fires on demand.

[Suff]

Mine is a 5.56 short rifle. Lousy with a pistol as 200 rounds in a sig 9mm at a gun club in NC proved.

[TheOstrich]

The local gun club has an indoor range in a building behind one of the goals at my local soccer club. I've been increasingly tempted to ask about joining, but I don't have any relevant experience so I probably wouldn't be accepted ....

I think ultimately we are going to have to fight another conventional war in the Middle East. We won't do it until the USA have finally got rid of Obama so it's at least two years away. But we will do so one day, for our own survival.

In this country, we are already totally in hock jointly to the EU and Arabia who own swathes of our land and infrastructure. Things like the imposition of sharia principles at that London hotel (as reported yesterday in the DM) are significant pointers towards the take-over of this country; to my mind, it's just a question of which foreign entity eventually gets the majority stake.

I'd love to see us with a prime minister who will lead us from the front and re-nationalise everything we've sold off in the last 30 years - without compensation. But that's a pipe-dream; it won't happen in my lifetime.

[cromwell]

The local gun club has an indoor range in a building behind one of the goals at my local soccer club. I've been increasingly tempted to ask about joining, but I don't have any relevant experience so I probably wouldn't be accepted ....

Yes you would! Six months as a probationary member and if they judge that you are not the West Midlands answer to Jesse James, you'd be in!