Thanks for passing the word along.

Digger: I have no idea how I ended up tracking back to that July post. No idea.

Anyway, what I said in my post was incomplete -- I posted my entry and since I was on IM with Rusty (we went to college together) I sent him a note to ask him what he thought about my post. He liked it, and wrote an obviously more complete entry and everyone started linking to him saying that he came up with the story.

Obviously his blog is huge and mine is not, so that's the way it works. My sentiment in my update was just a little friendly jealousy.

Thanks for the link as well.

We should have treated it as an Act Of War, and at least implemented the following:

1.Naval Blockade of Iranian ports. No food, no oil, nothing.
2.Holding Khomani and other leaders (and their families) personally responsible for our embassy personnel's safety
3.Immediate impounding of Iranian assets (not done for several months)
4.The destruction of Iranian oil-related assets, on an announced schedule. (A set of ascending consequences for non-compliance.)
5.A credible threat of using nuclear weapons (after giving the target city 24 hours for evacuation) should anything happen to the hostages.

I remember clearly what Carter did...nothing. I also remember Khomani mocking Carter from "The Holy City of Quom."

Carter's inaction could be thought of as the root cause of these terrorist states treating the U.S. (as said earlier by Mao) as a "Paper Tiger."