Dust Off 300 Beautiful Bombers

To hell with Iran and its hypocritical, cynical charge of historical revisionism against the film "300." The movie, which raked in $70 million in its opening weekend, is based on a comic-book fantasy version of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., in which a force of 300 Spartans held off a massive Persian army at a mountain pass in Greece for three days. Javad Shamghadri, cultural adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said the United States tries to "humiliate" Iran in order to reverse historical reality and "compensate for its wrongdoings in order to provoke American soldiers and warmongers" against Iran. Full story... To Hell with the Iranians. "Reverse historical reality," they say. Ha! Every time I hear the holocaust-denying President Mahmud Ahmadinejad spew his venom I think Mark Levin is right: Dust off those beautiful bombers. 300 seems like a good number, doesn't it? Here's a history lesson for you, Tehran: The long path to battle at Thermopylae began in what is now Iran, heart of the once vast Persian empire. Nowadays, ancient ruins attest to its long-vanished greatness, but to the Greeks of the early 5th century bc, the Persian empire was young, aggressive and dangerous. Persian expansion had begun in the mid-6th century, when its first shah, or great king, Cyrus, had led a revolt against the dominant Medes. By 545 bc, Cyrus had extended Persian hegemony to the coast of Asia Minor. The Greeks of Asia Minor were blessed during their period of subjugation only insofar as the Persian kings generally remained remote figures of power. Stories abounded of executions and tortures ordered on the whims of angry monarchs. One shah's wife reportedly had 14 children buried alive in an attempt to cheat death. There seems to have been little escape from the arbitrary tyranny of the rulers known by the Greeks simply as "the King" or "the Great King," enforced by a system of spies who acted as his eyes and ears. Such was the general atmosphere of oppression that one Persian nobleman who failed to do the shah's bidding was forced to eat the flesh of his own son -- and upon being shown that he had just done so, could muster no more potent a reply than to say, "May the king's will be done." (From The History Net) More fun reading: Timeline of Islam