First of all, why do people even make such statements ?!
How does it come up ? "Hey, let's think of some really inflamatory and possibly open to misinterpretation stuff that we could use to stir up more antagonism!"

And second:
Quote Originally Posted by The Article
Republican presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo says that to deter a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States he would threaten to retaliate by bombing Islamic holy sites.
this makes no sense!
To deter = to prevent from occurring.
Retaliate = reply to an attack (i.e., that already occurred).

So.... in order to prevent them from attacking, he would threaten to bomb them after they attack ?

Finally... they nuke you and you "threaten" to use conventional bombs on them ?! What kind of wimpy weakling reply is that anyway ??