White House to okay negotiating with terror groups holding U.S. hostages

[Raphael]

Prisoner exchanges should be regularly made and used as an opportunity to plant tracking chips so you can bomb large numbers of them later.

Why bother, they do enough revealing of their location with their twitter updates and selfies.

[Juvenal]

My impression has been there's always been such negotiation; it's just not been publicly acknowledged.

This is actually about allowing families to pay ransoms. Prior administrations had facilitated these transfers, but Obama reversed the policy when he came into office, leaving the families who wanted to ransom their relatives to their own devices. There's been a lot of pushback lately, especially after hostages were killed in a couple of attempted rescue raids. There have also been reports that American hostages have been subjected to worse treatment than other foreign nationals because the kidnappers knew they had no value other than for propaganda.

[KingsGambit]

Where do you guys get your news?

I tend to get it aggregated, so no single source.

[Bill the Cat]

Where do you guys get your news?

The Richmond Times Dispatch, CNN, MSN, and a few other news outlets.