Evil and Inhuman

Muslims continue to run amok, persecuting Christians.

Pope Benedict made his first public appearance since the beginning of the violent Muslim uprising that he sparked when he cited a quotation that angered them.

He used his weekly Angelus blessing to express regret over the uproar caused by his address at the University of Regensburg in Germany.

The Pope personally apologized for using the quotation, something that Muslim leaders had been demanding, as the radical Muslim ranks burned effigies of the Pope, firebombed churches, and threatened a suicide attack on the Vatican.

The New York Times also demanded that the Pope apologize for upsetting Muslims, and sparking the violent rampages.

From The LA Times:

By making a personal and public apology, Benedict hoped to calm the fury that exploded after he delivered a major address last week at the University of Regensburg, Germany, in which he quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor who regarded some of the prophet Muhammad's teachings as "evil and inhuman."

Major Arab television networks gave considerable coverage to the pope's Sunday message; the Al Arabiya network carried it live. Initial reaction from Islamic groups was mixed, with many saying they still wanted a fuller apology.

Imagine that. Pope Benedict's apology didn't satisfy the extremists.

I'm shocked!

...At Castel Gandolfo, security was tighter than usual. Police sharpshooters overlooked the piazza where the crowd assembled to hear the pope. Guards screened the estimated 2,000 pilgrims, passing them through metal detectors and checking purses and backpacks.

The pope emerged on the balcony of his palazzo and began to address the crowd when a huge downpour of rain drenched everyone in sight. He chuckled and apologized for the weather, adding that rain is also a sign of God's work. Then he continued with the more serious matter at hand.

"I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims," he said, adding that the quote from Emperor Manuel II Paleologus did not reflect his own opinion.

Benedict noted that on Saturday, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the No. 2 official in the Vatican, had offered a written clarification of the meaning of the pope's speech. The statement also relayed the pope's "deep regrets." But many of the pope's critics wanted to hear it from the pope himself.

"I hope that this serves to appease hearts," Benedict said, "and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect."

I'm afraid that the blackened hearts of the Islamofascists won't be appeased.

They don't want apologies. They don't want peace. They want to kill the infidels.

Regardless of how Benedict's Sunday message is accepted, damage has been done to the Roman Catholic Church and its international mission, analysts said. In the minds of many Muslims, the pope has cemented what they see as his disdain for their faith, a perception that imperils interreligious dialogue and could only further sour relations between Muslims and Christians at a time of global confrontation.

Several of the Islamic leaders who rose to condemn Benedict in the last several days have cast him as part of what they see as a vast Western conspiracy against Islam, and have put him in the same category as President Bush.

With all due respect, these "analysts" are idiots.

The Catholic Church hasn't taken a hit.

Pope Benedict's words were taken out of context. The media served to fuel the fires set by the raging Muslims.

The fact is the Pope didn't "sour relations" between the faiths. Muslim extremists are itching for all out war with the infidels and looking for any justification to proceed.

What about the disdain Muslims have shown for Christians, setting fire to churches?

That doesn't exactly help matters, does it?

Why don't the "analysts" put the blame for souring relations on the Muslim extremists?

Why do the lib media see this as a one-way street?

The anti-Catholic bias is so clear.
From The Mirror:

The Mujahedeen Army vowed to attack the Vatican. In a film it showed a crucifix sliced in two with a sword and footage of Benedict, 79, and the World Trade Center burning.

A voice said: "We swear to destroy their cross in the heart of Rome and their Pope will weep as the Vatican is struck." Effigies of the Pontiff have been burned across the Muslim world.

That's the voice of evil. It's the expression of a sick ideology.

The past days have been filled with threats against Christians and threats have been fulfilled.

This act is the most horrific yet.

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA (AP) -- An elderly Italian nun who devoted her life to helping the sick in Africa was shot dead by two gunmen at a hospital Sunday in an attack possibly linked to worldwide Muslim anger toward Pope Benedict XVI.

Sister Leonella, 65, was shot in the back four times by pistol-wielding attackers as she left the Austrian-run S.O.S. hospital at lunch after finishing nursing school for trainee medics. Her bodyguard also was slain.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, which came just hours after a leading Somali cleric condemned the pope's remarks last week on Islam and violence.

The head of security for the Islamic militia that controls much of southern Somalia, Yusuf Mohamed Siad, said one man had been arrested and the second was being hunted. He said the killing might have stemmed from the uproar over the pope, but stressed he didn't know for sure.

"They could be people annoyed by the pope's speech, which angered all Muslims in the world, or they could have been having something to do with S.O.S.," he said. "We will have to clarify this through our investigation."

Whether or not the Pope's speech prompted these murders is irrelevant.

What matters is that a nun was shot in the back four times, gunned down in cold blood.

That's how Muslims respond when they're annoyed?

It's barbaric beyond words.

The Vatican called the killing a "horrible episode," and Italian President Giorgio Napolitano denounced it as a "horrendous crime."

"A woman who had dedicated her life to the service of the weakest, the most defenseless and the neediest, beyond any ethnic or religious distinction, has been hit," Napolitano said.

Sister Leonella, whose birth name was Rosa Sgorbati, had lived and worked in Kenya and Somalia for 38 years, her family said.

I am absolutely sickened by this.

What sort of animals would kill a 65 year old nun?

The act is EVIL AND INHUMAN.



This undated photo provided Sunday, Sept. 17, 2006 by the family of Sister Leonella, shows Italian nun Sister Leonella in Rezzanello di Gazzola, near Piacenza, Italy. (AP Photo/Courtesy of family, ho)

This is the enemy we're fighting, the Islamic extremists that find it appropriate to execute an elderly woman by shooting her in the back.

But what is going to be the big story today?

Not this.
This is what will get attention.

In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.

Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and the U.S. Supreme Court. But the bitterest words come from inside the system, the size of several major U.S. penitentiaries.

"It was hard to believe I'd get out," Baghdad shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi told The Associated Press after his release — without charge — last month. "I lived with the Americans for one year and eight months as if I was living in hell."

Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention, the vast majority in Iraq.

Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were "mistakes," U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.

This is a consequence of fighting a war. It's a war that WE DID NOT CHOOSE.

Suspected enemies were detained. Those that were deemed to not be a threat were released, without an apology or compensation. Why?

IT'S A WAR.

It's not pretty.

And it wasn't pretty when radical Muslims murdered Sister Leonella.

Where is this slain innocent woman's apology?

Where is her compensation?

The double standard is deplorable and totally predictable.