As readers familiar with Z Sunday will know, I talk politics. It is Mark Disney who is talking war. He concludes his letter with "western politicians and their media mouthpieces are softening us up for a potential attack [on Iran]".

Mark (I'm reciprocating his 'our Helen') also writes some paragraphs earlier: "Clearly, the land mass of Soviet Russia did not disappear nor did its people but the regime did fall. The reference is obviously to regime change and not to thermo-nuclear obliteration"

This is what I wrote in Round 1: [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's] "meaning is either 'regime change' or 'dissolution of the state', which nonetheless implies that Israel in its present form, not unlike the disintegrated USSR, should cease to exist." While Mark and I concur that Option 1 is regime change, he drags in "thermo-nuclear obliteration".

Mark's rebuttal to me is headlined Ridiculous that Iran would nuke Israel .

I wrote all of 1,378 words in my letter on the Iranian president. If you'll comb it line by line, you will find I never ever alluded to Iran nuking Israel, Iran making first strike against Israel or even used any word or phrase remotely belonging to the Constellation Warfare. Mark is plucking at empty space, just as he had before plucked at fuddled 'facts'.

His space flight is clearly on the wrong trajectory. The one and only time I used the word "nuclear" was to say that Ahmadinejad had succeeded in "showing up Western hypocrisy, including on the matter of [Iran's] nuclear ambitions." I had declined to speculate whether the ambitions were for peaceful energy use or otherwise.

When I wrote earlier, I took issue not with Iran but with Mark for his fudging on claimed 'facts'. The crux of my contention is that Mark takes it upon himself to proclaim for Ahmadinejad: "he did not say he wants to" [wipe Israel off ...]

That's why I clarified: "Granted that Ahmadinejad did not say that 'he', personally, 'wants to' wipe Israel off the map'; what he meant was [merely] that Israel should be wiped off the map."

To which Mark now counters: "Is that really what he meant? Does she have a direct line into 'the Prez' innermost thoughts?"

Sigh. Do you see why Mark's use of 'language and its nuances' was objectionable the first time around and is once again annoying?

If I have to employ more painstaking English for Mark's cherry-picking benefit then alright, my expanded sentence should read: "what the majority of specialist translators and Farsi-speaking reporters have understood him to mean in his speeches and remarks was [merely] that Israel should be wiped off the map."

That's why I quoted Helen Boaden in the context of her position as head of BBC News on why the broadcaster stuck to its guns in retaining the "wipe off map" phraseology; the experts had assured her it's an accurate reflection of what the Iranian president 'meant'.

To recap Boaden's explanation: "There is no direct translation into English of the Farsi phrase in question. Therefore, there are a number of possible ways of rendering the phrase into English." To me what she says sounds eminently reasonable and is worth quoting.

Mark's reaction to 'my namesake' on the other hand, is to attack her character. He pours scorn by revealing that posts on a website have "ridiculed, castigated and lampooned" the woman for her sin of "peddl(ing) the party line". He however made not the slightest effort to show how what Boaden explains above can be construed as unreasonable.

What she says is relevant because as evidenced by Mark, he chooses one translation over the rest. For him, the phrase suitably reads "the eventual disappearance from 'the pages of time' of the Zionist regime". That's close to what I'd referred to previously as the apologetic American version which is disputed by Iranian translators.

We need to bear in mind that the October 2005 speech was not an isolated utterance. That why, I wrote as Mark observes, a 'very detailed response' citing other later occasions when the Prez spoke in the same vein. But even then, there still remained much of Ahmadinejad in his own words I could not cite due to space constraints.

I'm more than willing to cede the talent of clairvoyance to Mark but I must say what he's shown of his mind-reading skills on me is not up to mark. He makes the point: [Helen] "conveniently ignores the other fact that Iran does not possess nuclear weapons ..."

Since unlike Mark I did not have warmongering on my mind, I had not elected to conjecture as to how erasing Israel from the map is actually to be accomplished.

My charge which I'm repeating is that it is disingenuous of Mark to mislead Malaysiakini readers into thinking that Ahmadinejad never said anything to warrant the global furore he caused, and persistently causes.

Let's go with Mark hypothetically; allow the "destruction" as Ahmadinejad has often been translated to declare of the 'Zionist regime'. What happens to its five million Jews the day after the regime 'falls'?

Or put yourself in an Israeli's shoes and imagine if the president of a neighbouring country was consistently and repeatedly to insist Malaysia should be wiped off the map. Can we please rise above this pettiness against Jews?