Taking a page from the playbook of General Anthony McAuliffe – whose forces were surrounded in Bastogne by the Germans in World War II’s Battle of the Bulge – and his famously written one-word response to a surrender ultimatum, “Nuts!” is none other than Congressman Allen West (FL-22).

In response to a letter from the Council on American-Islamic Relations requesting that the Congressman disassociate himself from activists the group considers anti-Islamic, the South Florida Muslim group received the shortest letter ever seen from a member of the United States House of Representatives.

How short?  A single word – “Nuts!” – All in capital letters.  Never at a loss of words and straight to the point was the freshman Congressman from Plantation, Florida.

“I was shocked at first. I didn’t expect this from a congressman,” stated Nezar Hamze, executive director of CAIR Florida.  “We stand up for the civil rights of the Muslim community.  That’s what we do,”

Hamze wrote to West earlier this month with concerns about the Congressman and his relationship with groups and people the South Florida Muslim group considers to be anti-Islamic.

“When I first saw that, I wasn’t sure if he was calling me nuts, or he was calling my concerns nuts,” said Hamze.

In prior correspondence with CAIR Florida, Congressman West indicated that he was neither anti-Islamic nor anti-Muslim.

In other news:  No decision yet on whether Congressman Allen West will run in the Republican primary for the United States Senate to unseat Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.).

“I cracked it open enough so that people can slip a note under the door and I can read the note and I can write back on the note ‘probably not’ and send it back out under the door,” West said Monday night at a Palm Beach County Tea Party gathering, reported The Sun-Sentinel.