Finances and physical condition aside, would any of you decide to take a backpacking vacation on the Iraq/Iran border? Okay, you're young and stupid and you've got a lot of money and you want to go some place exotic on your vacation. There's Machu Picchu. There's Nepal. There's Cambodia. There's a couple wild and wooly Stans down below Russia. There's Alabama. There are literally thousands of locations where we don't have an ongoing military and/or political conflict.

Tourists? Yeah, right.




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I'm sure you have been right many times in your life. You have never, ever been any more right than you are on this.

Those people prancing along the Iranian border were asking for trouble. They got it. They need to squirm their own way out of this. Just like the illegal Mexican who happened to accidentally "Hike" into US territory. HA!

the Arabic languages and customs. There is certainly the aspect that to most rational thinking bipeds would be categorized as stupid.

In this day and age of media rules there may be the calculated option of....a very well planned incident. No less dangerous, but could make more sense than being just aloof about the area/situation.

They are now in the eye of the media. Assuming they make it out alive, they will certainly be one heck of a lot more main stream and sought after than before their trip.

Someone once said get them to know your name then go back and correct the reputation.....or something like that.

btk

Originally Posted by Muncle

...would any of you decide to take a backpacking vacation on the Iraq/Iran border?...

The answer is obvious. Even more obvious if I were of the Jewish faith, which the names of the students suggest they might be (Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal were the students captured. A fourth hiker, Shon Meckfessel, stayed behind in Iraq.)

Youthful exhuberance and risk-taking is one thing. Stupidity and simply challenging common sense is another.