Gratuitous Offensive Mohammed Cartoon of the Day

Don't take my word for it. Take this guy's.

Or this guy's. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

The most interesting thing about the second link is how all these liberal academics try to excuse the Iranian lunatic and to convince the rest of us that he didn't actually mean what the world thinks he said.

Equally interesting is that these kooky academics are contradicted by Mahmoud's own spokesman who defend the widely disseminated translation as accurate.

"[T]ranslators in Tehran who work for the president's office and the foreign ministry disagree with them. All official translations of Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement, including a description of it on his Web site (www.president.ir/eng/), refer to wiping Israel away. Sohrab Mahdavi, one of Iran's most prominent translators, and Siamak Namazi, managing director of a Tehran consulting firm, who is bilingual, both say "wipe off" or "wipe away" is more accurate than "vanish" because the Persian verb is active and transitive."