Ahmadinejad Dreams Up Another Wacky Assassination Plot

Ahmadinejad must be desperately clinging to power in Iran, because his assassination fantasies are getting more bizarre and ridiculous by the day. A week ago he claimed Bush tried to assassinate him while he was in Baghdad in March, and now he believes those filthy Italians tried to zap him to death with an X-ray machine. From RIA Novosti (h/t Jawa):

Enemies of Iran attempted to kill President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with high-intensity X-ray radiation during his recent trip to Italy, Iran's former ambassador in Rome said on Monday. Ahmadinejad attended a global summit on food at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's Rome headquarters in early June. "On the eve of the [Iranian] president's visit to Rome, we checked the radiation levels in his temporary residence," Abolfazi Zohrevand told Iran's IRNA news agency. "We found out that the radiation was higher than normal and its intensity was rapidly increasing," he said, adding that several devices were used to avoid potential error in readings, but they all showed the same results.

Since I worked in the radiation field in the Navy, allow me to give Mr. Ahmadinejad's people a brief science lesson:

• Average Radiation Does of an X-ray: ~10-20 mrem
• Additional radiation exposure LT Nixon was subjected to after 3 years from working on a nuclear submarine with "one of the dirtiest reactors" in the U.S. Navy: ~250 mrem
• Average yearly background radiation from Radon, Cosmic Rays, etc.: ~300 mrem
• Radiation to make your hair fall out and cause a painful death: ~200,000 mrem (all at once)

Clearly an X-ray machine is incapable of inducing acute radiation sickness even if the thing gets turned to "11". The only plausible justification to Ahmadinejad's outrage is that he thought the X-ray machine got a shot of his pantaloons like some bad 1960s novelty specs found on the back page of a comic book.

Western swine offend Ahmadinejad's modesty