Looking for Armageddon

The guy who makes baby Kim look sane.

Wizblog Dan cited a Weekly Standard article last night  [Why the letter from Ahmadinejad is important] which posits ''the import of the letter that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, sent to President Bush in the first week of May is that Ahmadinejad and Iran have declared war on the United States.'' ''What is known, or what should be known and deeply grasped, is that everything Ahmadinejad--and for that matter the radical movement as a whole--does is guided by an ideological vision and commitment. It needs to be addressed as such.'' Indeed.  What I haven't heard a whole lot about is just this.  Ahmadinejad subscribes to a radical  (even by bin Laden standards) Shia belief in the second coming of the so-called ''Hidden Imam,'' also known as the 12th Imam or the Mahdi, who is said to have gone into hiding in the ninth century. According to Shia belief, his return is expected to ignite a battle between the forces of good and evil before bringing forth an era of peace and justice and the ultimate triumph of Shiite Islam.¹''  In other words, without world conflageration, no Mahdi.