Habu — Thanks for the history/reminder. I was a sometimes reader perhaps that long ago, but only very intermittently; I don’t remember the site closing down at all, must have missed that one. Elephant Bar sounds familiar, but that’s also a restaurant chain here in Los Angeles — so maybe I’m confusing the two. I remember reading several sites in those early days before things started to fracture, like smalldeadanimals, littlegreenfootballs, JihadWatch/DhimmiWatch and other sites which I no longer visit, all of which were confronting Islamic Jihad. Ironically I think I first heard about WretchardtheCat reading that once and future tool, Andrew Sullivan in 2004-5. Since then I’ve been a huge fan. BC, Shrinkwrapped, and JihadWatch are the best blogs on the subject at hand, and I find the comments by posters at Shrink/BC to be just about the best on the web, bar none. I posted thousands of comments under another nic in those days at all of these sites (except for LGF — CJ’s bizarro registration scheme of opening up registration for arbitrary minutes along with his insane “lizaroid army” shtick always totally put me off — my intuition about that guy proved right…) A few years ago I stumbled upon my nom de guerre and have stuck with MD ever since. Amazing seeing how the core of the anti-Jihad blogosphere has evolved. It’s also heartening to see some of the themes, profiling, the real danger of Islamic Jihad, the tenets of terrorism enshrined within Islam becoming more and more mainstream. It sometimes appears we’re moving backward, but when you compare the dialoge taking place in the aftermath of Kurt Westergaard’s recent assault, or the panty bomber and Fort Bragg — our nation has made some remarkable headway. At least some in the media, and some politicians are clearly beginning to listen, though it’s taken far too long, and we’re barely starting to learn about our heinous enemy.