Via LGF, Jihad Watch is reporting that the letter Mahmoud Ahmagonnameetallah sent President Bush was more than just an invitation to sit down and settle our differences over tea and yellow cake.

Spencer says:

Both bolded statements suggest that the letter was indeed the call to Islam that must precede any attack, in accord with Muhammad's words (in Sahih Muslim 4294) about inviting the unbelievers to accept Islam or dhimmitude and fighting him only if he refuses both. We shall see.

The blog grandfather says:

Only a few blogs (and almost no mainstream media) have realized the truth about Iranian madman Ahmadinejad’s letter to President Bush. It was not an offer to negotiate, and it was not simply a lunatic’s rant. It was a calculated invitation to convert to Islam, a da’wa—an Islamic requirement (commanded by Mohammed) before waging war against unbelievers.

My brother-in-anxiety Jeff G:

But whether or not Ahmadinejad (and the mullahs) are pragmatists playing chess, or else crazed religious fanatics poised to unleash some sort of devestating [sic] weapon on the world, what is unquestionable is that Ahmadinejad has positioned his pieces so as to appear ready to go to war.

So what to make of this?

I have questions, many questions.

I'm just too tired to answer them myself.

All I can think to do right now is to alert as many people as I can to the possibility that we are on the brink of a full-scale, all out war with Iran. In contrast with the small-scale, low-intensity war we've been in with Iran since 1979.

Posted by: Vinnie at 10:24 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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On the passing of Jawa Report co-blogger Demosophist's brother-in-law.

Posted by: Howie at 12:43 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Found this on Conservative Thinking this morning. Adopt a soldier, help out buying cool scarves for our boys and girls sweating it out in Iraq.

Soldiers Angels We have heard from many deployed troops this week, everyone has the same thing to say,

IT IS HOT!! It is hard to think...

I would like to get cool scarf to every hero on our list, THE TEMPERATURES IN IRAQ ARE WELL OVER 100 DEGREES, and will stay that way till SeptemberÂ….

Â…We have over 12,000 heroes on this fourth deployment.

The scarves cost 1.20 and the shipping is 1.12, about 2.50 ea.
So in order to do this we need 25,000 dollars, not a small feat but these scarves help to keep their brains cool and offers comfort to our heroes.

Personal note and update below the break.
more...

Posted by: Howie at 12:28 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Packing update: In response to the many suggestions made by readers here about what I ought to take with me in my carry-on bag, just in case the fit hits the shan, the following thought occured to me:

Do they make a pig-skin leather? Because if they did, that would solve a lot of problems.

Pork dual action strangling /mujahidin repellent belt: check

Patent pig-skin leather 10 eyed steel-toed Dr. Martin's boots / hijacker club: check

Ham wristwatch band, with boomerang action and concealed strangling wires: check

What else am I still missing?

Update by Vinnie

Rusty, all you're missing are these in case you get wounded in battle. Thanks to Beth for that one.

Posted by: Rusty at 10:21 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Me: I'm out of here for a week or so. I'll try to check my e-mail from the road.

You: Good luck, have fun.

Me: Hopefully, if all goes as planned, I'll be worshipping Allah at the Finsbury Park Mosque some time next week.

You: .......

You: .......

Me: Wait, did I just say worshipping Allah?

You: ....

Me: Isn't worshipping Allah that sport where the chicks wail on each other?

You: ......

You: ..............

You: Foxy boxing?

Me: Foxy boxing. Yeah. What I meant was foxy boxing!

You: .....

Me: Hopefully, if all goes as planned, I'll be watching foxy boxing at the Finsbury Park Mosque some time next week.
----------------

I'll try to post images from the Finsbury Park foxy boxing match next week.

Posted by: Rusty at 10:13 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Personally, I'm not a fan of Chick tracts. They are usually offensive, always simplistic, and often highly innacurate.

Far worse than Chick's idiotic tracts, though, are laws prohibiting their distribution. There is not a single Islamic country on the planet which allows open proselyzing of Muslims. Not. A. Single. One.

So, is it a good thing that some of these Christian tracts were found on windshields in Dubai? Absolutely. Free speech means nothing if idiots aren't allowed to distribute their garbage. And no man is truly free unless he can openly convert from one faith to antoher.

Marcus Aurelius over at Blogger Beer has the entire story summed up.

Posted by: Rusty at 10:01 AM | Comments (27) | Add Comment
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If these men arrived in a stolen plane there should be some criminal law in Britain they could use? Certainly the plane was still hijacked when it arrived in Britain therefore they should be charged. But today they are walking around free.

BBC: The government has said it will appeal against a decision to allow nine Afghan hijackers to stay in Britain because it was unsafe for them to return home.
Home Secretary John Reid said it was important to challenge any ruling which may "appear inexplicable or bizarre to the general public".

A High Court judge ruled the nine, involved in a four-day stand-off at Stansted Airport in 2000, could remain.

Prime Minister Tony Blair had said the ruling was an "abuse of common sense".
In a statement in Downing Street, Mr Reid said: "When decisions are taken which appear inexplicable or bizarre to the general public, it only reinforces the perception that the system is not working to protect or in favour of the vast majority of ordinary decent, hard-working citizens in this country.

"That is a perception that should worry all of us and it is a perception that all of us should be working to put right."
'Abuse of justice'..

..."We can't have a situation in which people, who hijack a plane, we're not able to deport back to their country," Mr Blair said on Wednesday.

"It's not an abuse of justice for us to order their deportation; it's an abuse of common sense...

Posted by: Howie at 08:24 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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(Baghdad) Witnesses saw two Iraqi journalists, Laith al-Dulaimi and Muazaz Ahmed Barood, abducted on Sunday southeast of Baghdad. Their bodies were found on Monday.

From CPJ.org:

Al-Dulaimi, a reporter for the privately owned TV station Al-Nahrain, and Muazaz Ahmed Barood, a telephone operator for the station, were kidnapped by men disguised as police officers at Diyala Bridge while driving home to Mada'in, a town 12 miles (19 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, Abdulkarim al-Mehdawi, the station's general manager told CPJ.

Their bodies were discovered at al-Wihda district, 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Baghdad. Both men, in their late 20s, were shot in the chest, al-Mehdawi told CPJ.

Al-Dulaimi became a reporter for Al-Nahrain four months ago. Barood worked at the station since it was established just over a year and a half ago. The motive behind the murders is unclear. Al-Mehdawi told CPJ that neither the station nor the journalists had ever received threats.

From Interested-Participant.

Posted by: Mike Pechar at 07:31 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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I've had panic attacks.

For some reason, although I know what's causing it, I swear I'm having a heart attack.

The root cause is my screwed up shoulder and back. If I move a certain way, or do a certain thing, it causes pain in my chest muscles.

Since my left shoulder is a constant source of misery to me, thanks to chronic tendinitis, the combination of of chest pains with left arm pain triggers the attack.

I haven't seen a doctor about it, nor even mentioned it to anybody but my wife until now. Mainly because the first couple of times it happened, I ended up realizing that I really wasn't having a heart attack, and that it was my screwy left shoulder causing the pain.

Maybe it will help me by telling you about it. Writing about it seemed to have helped Ace.

I still get the pain in the chest, and in the left arm, and the first thought in my head is "heart attack!" Which, of course, causes the heart to start racing. And the brain to start irrationalizing. I must be a mild case, though, I can usually talk myself out of it.

I will always get great mirth out of a group of people who will lambast a Conservative for ingesting a legal substance, be it Klonopin, alcohol, or nicotine, but will defend to the death a meth addict who robs and murders.

Maybe they should be reminded that Liberalism is a mental disorder, and far more people suffer from it than those who have panic attacks.

Then again, like they would give a crap anyway.

Posted by: Vinnie at 10:49 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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At the same time, the Americans and the Government were able to absorb our painful blows, sustain them, compensate their losses with new replacements, and follow strategic plans which allowed them in the past few years to take control of Baghdad as well as other areas one after the other. That is why every year is worse than the previous year as far as the MujahidinÂ’s control and influence over Baghdad.

5. The role that the Islamic party and the Islamic Scholars Committee play in numbing the Sunni people through the media is a dangerous role. It has been proven from the course of the events that the American investment in the Party and the Committee were not in vain. In spite of the gravity of the events, they were able to calm down the Sunni people, justify the enemy deeds, and give the enemy the opportunity to do more work without any recourse and supervision.

Read the whole damn thing.

Quote above is taken from the link titled "full translation, read more."

CP @ VAM, MVWRC, and TDPB

Posted by: Vinnie at 10:31 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Wear a belt: useful for strangling would be hijackers. A heavy buckle is a nice bludgeon, too.

A pack of guitar strings: same as above, but with the added bonus of severing arteries.

Laptop: Screen can be shattered into nice shards. If left in carrying case, makes another nice bludgeon.

Roll of quarters: almost as good as brass knuckles.

How about these shoes? Ha!

Anyone else have any good ideas for Rusty's carry-on?

Posted by: Vinnie at 06:48 PM | Comments (21) | Add Comment
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Annika posts a link to a 2 week old story, that, oddly enough, didn't seem to make national headlines.

I'm a news junkie, you're a news junkie. I surf MyWay news, Google news, Yahoo news, Fox News, Drudge, and our local news looking for stuff to post on.

And I won't even list the number of blogs I hit each day. Yeesh.

I hadn't heard of this, have you?

Annika makes an interesting observation. This incident happened the week of the United 93 premiere.

Posted by: Vinnie at 06:17 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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I'll be heading to London on Saturday. Last call for any London readers who might want to hang out. E-mail me at contact information above directly.

Posted by: Rusty at 03:41 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Jason is on a roll and sets this woman in a full burka eating spaghetti, which we brought to you earlier here, to the appropriate music. Did you think it was funny the first time? This takes the funny up a notch (WARNING: screen spewage alert, drink liquids at safe distance)

Posted by: Rusty at 03:16 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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Jason presents his mashed version of this Mujahidin training video set to Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plumb Fairies. Kind of puts it in a whole new perspective.

Incidentally, I've seen the Nutcracker at the Bolshoi. Would have been much more interesting had the above Muj played Clara.

UPDATE: Jason tells me his video was posted earlier by Misha.

Posted by: Rusty at 03:13 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Echo's of Aisha, Mohammed's 6 year old wife? Muslims defend Mohammed's alleged honor by pointing out that a) Aisha was 9 when Mohammed finally had sex with her, and b) back in Mohammed's day girls matured faster.

Matured faster? Right.

The third option, of course, is just to deny that Mohammed ever did this and claim the hadiths are wrong. Which would solve a lot of problems. Or, maybe Mohammed was just a pedophile, in which case......

The Sun (hat tip: Peter):

A MAN aged 37 has been arrested after an 11-year-old girl gave birth to a baby boy....

The man and the girl are thought to be visitors to the UK from Africa, possibly from Somalia.

The baby was kept at the hospital in a special care unit, and the girl was taken into the care of Hillingdon Borough Council. The man was not held immediately.

However, police arrested him in Uxbridge yesterday and he was questioned about the pregnancy. He was released on bail until July while cops investigate.

Posted by: Rusty at 03:01 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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(Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) Four Muslim youths in their late teens abducted a boy on Sunday and took him to a remote desert location where they raped him. It's not clear how frequently this type of crime occurs, but my guess would be that it happens more often than is reported.

From ArabNews.com:

A police source said the youths had found the boy in the company of another boy in the neighborhood.

They stopped their car beside one of the boys and asked him to get in. When he refused to comply, one of the youths pulled out a knife and threatened to stab him. The frightened boy got in and the youth took him to a lonely place away from the town.

According to the report, the suspects allegedly sodomized the victim and recorded the crime on a digital camera.

Notice how the young followers of the religion of peace were thoughtful enough to record their assault on the boy on video. Maybe they were planning on reliving their demented excitement.

From Interested-Participant.

Posted by: Mike Pechar at 01:40 PM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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(Jakarta, Indonesia) Many people may recall last October's barbaric beheadings of three Christian schoolgirls in Indonesia. Well, here's the latest news on the case.

From TheJakartaPost.com:

Seven suspected Islamic terrorists have confessed to beheading three Christian schoolgirls on Indonesia's Sulawesi Island, police said Wednesday.

The seven detained suspects confessed under questioning that they planned and carried out the Oct. 29 beheadings in the Central Sulawesi town of Poso, police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Rudi Sufahriadi told The Associated Press.

Another girl was wounded but spared by the assailants, he said.

Two of the suspects also say they have ties to Noordin Top, regarded as a key leader of the al-Qaeda-linked group Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), according to Central Sulawesi police chief Brig. Gen. Oegroseno.

Let's hope that the murdering criminals are treated harshly but, if history is an indicator, they likely won't be. Indonesia is a Muslim nation and it has customarily given jihadists insultingly lenient punishment.

From Interested-Participant.

Posted by: Mike Pechar at 01:26 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Egypt is on the front burner today. The nation suffers from al-Qaeda inspired terror and is fighting hard. ThatÂ’s a good thing. WAPO :

ROME — One day after police killed a man described as the mastermind of an attack last month at the seaside town of Dahab, Egyptian authorities claimed to have all but broken up a group that bombed several Red Sea resorts.

Big Pharaoh :Just got information that the Egyptian embassy in DC was bombarded with e-mails demanding the release of Alaa and the others. Good job.

Update: There is a blog dedicated to Alaa and the others who were detained during the demonstration on May 7th. As I stated before, the Egyptian embassy in DC got bombared by emails from concerned average Americans. We are also suggesting you to contact David Welch, Assistant Secertary and head of the State DepartmentÂ’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. His email is: nea-ela@state.gov

Well, 2 years ago I was told that a blog was just something you use to write stuff in and pray that people might be kind enough to spend 1 or 2 minutes reading your rantings.

Egyptian government and US state department!! That's not what I had in mind 2 years ago!

Posted by: Howie at 12:03 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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When the Taliban first blew up the statue of Buddha in Afghanistan I thought, “These people are going to be a problem. Now in Egypt the rise of the Islamists in politics threatens that nation’s deep heritage.

BBC : A religious ruling condemning the display of statues has angered Egyptian liberals and intellectuals who fear it could encourage religious zealots to attack the country's pharaonic heritage.

the ruling was issued by the Mufti, the most senior religious scholar in Egypt.
Islam has always been wary of representations of the human figure.
Anything which could even remotely suggest idolatry is frowned upon.
But sculpture in Egypt is as old as the pharaohs.

Posted by: Howie at 11:48 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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