Where's the Outrage Over "Family Circus?"

Condoleezza Rice has accused Iran and Syria of "fueling the fire," so to speak, by encouraging rage among Muslims over the Mohammad cartoons which recently came to light.

To recap - the Danish political cartoons, one of which features Mohammad with a bomb on his head, violate a Muslim tenet forbidding any depiction of the prophet. Middle-Eastern fundamentalists launched numerous heated protests and burned Danish and Norwegian embassies.

Many are boycotting all Danish products, causing significant drops in revenue.

And now, brought to you by who-didn't-see-this-coming news, the strife is being exploited by political interests.

"The world ought to call them on it," Rice said.

All in all, this is a giant ball of bad decisions and results that should have been expected. To retrospectively "call" a nation on opportunism is hypocritical and lacks any beneficial insight.

Knowing the cartoons would find their way into the hands of, and deeply offend, a huge portion of your country's business constituency, why publish them?

Reporters Without Borders, an international organization concerned largely with freedom of the press, maintains that the paper was well within its rights, exercising "an essential accomplishment of democracy."

Freedom of the press, yes, and also a horrible business decision. Now you can't sell your milk, and you've incited deadly riots, all for some cartoons that really aren't that funny.

While the results of the cartoons' publishing may have turned out unpredictably vast, perhaps thanks in part to nudges from political forces in Iran, Syria, and elsewhere, anyone who didn't expect some sort of backlash has been living under a rock.

Fundamentalists of any nation, of any creed, behave like snakes. Don't expect them not to attack.

Now, the same editor who published the Mohammad series is working toward contacts with Iranian newspapers to sequel the effort with some Holocaust gags.

Once bitten, twice dumb.