AND THE RIO GRANDE WHILE HE'S AT IT?

Kudos to TigerHawk (and by extention, to Hugh Hewitt) for his (and his) strong denunciation of House International Relations Committee member Tom Tancredo's suggestion that in the event of a nuclear attack against us by Islamic terrorists, we nuke Mecca.

My former tangential relationship with the Berkeley blogosphere has given me a certain unpleasant intimacy with Tancredo. Not that I've read those guys in months, but I'm sooo sure Tanky's quote will go over well in Iowa and New Hampshire. Eh...

But back to the TigerHawk post. In contrast to Jack being, well, sane, there's this from "The Apologist" in his comments:

I heard a portion of this interview on the radio and it was my impression that Tancredo was talking about how you disuade Al Qaeda from using the weapons if they have them. A kind of M.A.D. for jihadis. I don't think he was talking about simple revenge. Also he was very carful to couch it explicitely in hypothetical terms.

Oh, ok, that makes it all better. See, he wasn't talking about an actual bombing we've already undertaken, but rather just something we should do. And Tancredo was saying we should call the Islamic terrorists' bluff by doing the one thing that would not only turn the entire Islamic world, but also the bulk of Europe and Asia against us! Yeah, war of ideas indeed.

Reminds me of Ann Coulter's Observer interview from a few years back, when she said, famously,

My only regret with Tim McVeigh is that he didn't go to the New York Times building.

Which was bad enough, until she explained her comment when the interviewer warned her to 'be careful':

You're right, after 9/11 I shouldn't say that.

Quick, what's wrong with that?

I remember bloggers who would claim to be sane people defending her remark based on that qualifier.

(And by the way, Tancredo's idea is worse than anything Michael Moore has ever said. And Tom is in Congress)

(UPDATE: Also worse than anything Dick Durbin said.)