My personal opinion is they need to drag that Omar Sheik out back and shoot a few times in a few extremities and leave him to die with the buzzards.

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As we should know by now from the Palestinian suicide bombings and the 11 September hijackings, far from being afraid of dying, Moslem activists are actually keen to do so if they feel that it will result in political advantage. So quite apart from any moral objection to the death penalty (which I do have), it's very obvious that in this particular case, it won't work. Just look at Israel - the more Palestinians Sharon kills, the greater the number remaining who volunteer for suicide bombings.

IMHO the answer for this is for the west to reduce its need to involve itself in middle-east politics, i.e. reduce its dependance on oil. As it is Moslem extremists are finding themselves wealding greater power than they should be because the majority of the world's oil reserves are held in places like Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and the people who run these countries know that we need them.

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True the extremists seem to be very willing to volunteer for quick death, but the threat of long torture has so far wielded quite a bit of information. They arent so willing to volunteer if it means an inordinate amount of pain that does nothing but build on itself.

Just as with 9/11, the daniel pearl murder, and the threats by the killers of more murders on journalists to come, require justice, and to americans, that means retribution. Wether or not that is the right thing to do is up to personal interpretation.

It is true that America feels a need to involve itself in world affairs, but really would you have it any other way? Every time that the USA has stayed OUT of world affairs, we ended up with massive war and death, war and death that would have been minimized IF we had intervened when we had a chance to do so. After WWI, we relaxed, then we watched helplessly as Hitler grew to horrific power, and after the Empire of Japan involved us, we had to "involve" ourselves finally.

We screwed up on Vietnam, not in that we shouldnt have been there, but that we were not committed to an outcome.

We intervened with Milosovich. If not, he would have eventually accomplished his "ethinic cleansing".

We intervened after Iraq invaded Kuwait, and threatened to do so to the rest of all the oil producing countries. That would have given him complete control of the entire worlds economic backbone. he could have weilded supreme executive authority over the planet. hard to believe, but yes it is quite true.

Yes, our dependency on crude is unfortunate, but to do any change would not be billions, but hundreds of trillions of dollars. There are not even enough resources available to do any kind of massive switch to a renewable energy source in our lifetime. We can start, and make great strides. The clinton administrations spent over 100 billion dollars on research for this. Research that developed a total of ONE prototype electric car.

The batteries required to power an electric car require that you kill about 3000 fish and 200 trees to do it. the process in manufacturing these batteries cause enormous ecological impact. Much more than the fossil fuel burning.

What needs to be done, is to learn to refine and burn the fuel much more efficiently than current. It can be done, but isnt bieng done. Big oil controls, just as detroit controls, most of the sitting congress in the US. The US does need to lead in this effort, as the US creates more pollution and trash and ecological damage per capita than anywhere in the world, by threefold.

Solar and wind are the best way to go, using (unfortunately) batteries to store the generated power. We need to work as well on manufacturing techniques so that as little as possible damage is caused, and that all damage can be reclimated within 10 years.

As for me personally wanting those bastards dead, thats just my opinion, personally, i am opposed to the death penalty. I just get so irritated by these cowards who call themselves heros. Hey I am a coward, and willing to admit it.

Quite apart from the political problems caused by the oil situation, the reserves are eventually going to run out anyway, so that's yet another reason to do this. In the short term, yes we are going to need more nuclear power: the leftie environmentalits can mieow and hiss all they like (and, IMHO, most of them live in big houses and own two cars whilst telling the rest of us that this is bad), there's no alternative. In the medium term, governments need to really encourage energy efficency, not just talk about it. It costs me £8 for the petrol to drive to work and back; a train ticket costs £23. This situation needs to change, and I don't mean by sticking more tax on price of petrol.

But I'm convinced that a major part of the reason why a small number of Moslem extremist nations are threatening the world so effectively is due to the oil situation. It worries me that my light, heat and transport depends on placating regimes that stone people to death for doing things which aren't even criminal offences in any civilised country.

We need some long-term planning to eventually bring this situation to an end and, with all due respect, I don't think George Bush's intention to drill for more oil in Alaska is going to achieve that. It might buy time, but that's all. And I totally agree that the last thing we want to do is make heroes out of these arseholes. But by executing them, that's exactly what we'll be doing. I think it's very significant that in all his videos, Bin Liner went on about how heroic it was to die for Islam, but the man himself lurked in a cave and has probably now disappeared into a country which is either friendly to him or just doesn't have the political will to hunt him down, e.g. Somalia or Yemen. None of this dying in a blaze of glory stunt for him. If he ever is caught, I would like to see a totally open and transparent civillian trial, followed by him being locked up for the rest of his days in an obscure prison in the middle of nowhere (but one which meets human rights standards and which the UN or whoever could regularly inspect), where he couldn't make any videos or organise any terrorists. IMHO, that would be far more effective retribution than any execution.

Yasir Arafat is not a menace to society. Pat Robertson is a menace to society -- a Christian fascist who hates Jews, Muslims and Hindus. Not only that, Robertson has a national TV show on the Disney-owned ABC Family channel.

Big media always has a soft spot for fascism. In the 1930s the favorite rulers of the US press were Hitler and Mussolini. In the 1990s the favorite ruler of the US media was Rudolph Giuliani.

The corollary is that Bush and his thugs have now been correctly accused of undermining press freedom.

Yasir Arafat, I agree, is not a menace to society --at least not anymore. He may be the leading spokesman for the PLO, but he definitely is not the guy calling the shots anymore. The extreme factions of that group are doing what they want independently of what he wishes. And I think members of his own group may eventually assassinate him.