UPDATE 2/7/06: Bush has given his personal support for the Dutch Prime Minister who refuses to apologize to Muslims for the printing of the cartoons. So his State Department says we don’t approve, but Bush says he does approve. Also, if you’re interested in actually seeing the cartoons, I found this link over at the John and Ken website. If you’re Muslim, you probably shouldn’t click it 😉

America has apologized to radical Islam for the free-speech controversy that is embroiling Europe. That’s right, we APOLOGIZED to the radical element of Islam that endorses terrorism and hates our guts. Ladies and gentleman, we are now worse than FRANCE! America was founded on the principles of freedom and now Bush has finally sold us out completely. It was bad enough that he wants to take care of the illegal immigration problem by granting amnesty (the last time this was tried in 1986, illegal immigration INCREASED!) but now he has gone too far. I just can’t understand what Bush is thinking anymore.

The controversy started when a “series of caricatures, first published in Danish newspapers this September, featured Mohammed as complicit in suicide bombings and the oppression of women — one showed him with devil horns protruding from a turban” <http://www.dailyindia.com/show/915.php>. Radical Muslims everywhere immediately latched onto this and started protesting, while European countries had to face the question of whether or not to report and reproduce the cartoons. “While the debate rages, an important point has been overlooked: despite the Islamic prohibition against depicting Mohammed under any circumstances, hundreds of paintings, drawings and other images of Mohammed have been created over the centuries, with nary a word of complaint from the Muslim world” <http://aarons.cc/mohammed-mirror/>. So why is this particular incident generating so much controversy? Because the radical element of Islam is so powerful right now.

Also of interest is this article in today’s Washington post which talks about the deeper meaning of this controversy.