Oprah and The Preppy Wahhabis, Iraq's Axis of Evil, A Persian Gulf Political Casserole

Oprah recently started a 'prep' school for select poor girls in South Africa. This admirable project is by nature centered on a selective group of girls, and unfortunately most of them will eventually end up in places where they are least needed: Western Europe or North America. But that will come much later, after they are educated and trained, with the media attention gone. Unlike that other source of free 'education' for the Moslim poor in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and for the Moslem middle classes in the West- the Wahabi oil-financed madrassas. Madrassa in Arabic simply means 'school', a term that has been attached to the largely Saudi-financed fundamentalist religious schools run by Wahabi/Salafi shaikhs around the world. That was the genesis of the Taliban movement, the word 'Taliban' being plural of 'Talib', a seeker of knowledge, a student. That might also explain why three countries quickly recognized the Taliban regime after it overthrew the bickering Afghan government: Saudi Arabia (the money bag), Pakistan (its notorious ISI being the mentor), and the United Arab Emirates (not clear how the moderate and cosmopolitan UAE fit into this axis of .....goodnes?).
In any case, Oprah's African girls should turn out fine, unless she hires Wahhabi teachers for her school, in which case they will turn into little preppy Wahhabettes.

Terrorist bombers struck in a Shi'a area in central Baghdad (the Sadriya district) today, killing more than 130 civilians and wounding hundreds more. Two days earlier, another terror bombing in the Shi'a town of al-Hilla killed 73 people. Iraq's government spokesman said a ton of explosives was loaded on a truck, and he hinted that the terrorists may heve sneaked into Iraq from Syria. Initial Arab reaction was calm and neutral.....headlines reported about 'bombings in Baghdad, many dead and wounded'. No condemnation so far: perhaps they are waiting for the now almost inevitable bloody retaliation by the militias before condemning....condemning the retaliation not the initial act itself. This was not labeled a 'sectarian' massacre, even though the victims were Shi'as and the modus operandi of the mass killings clearly pointed to the Wahabi/Salafi/Ba'athist axis of evil. It becomes 'sectarian' only when the Shi'a militias commit their own bloody atrocities.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistant, meanwhile, called for calm and for avoiding doing anything that would raise sectarian tensions. Al-Sistani criticized those who issue fatwas against other sects and try to fan the flames of sectarianism among Moslems. Meanwhile, Salih al-Mutlak, head of the Sunni National Dialog Front, complained about police raiding his house and arrested two of his guards.
It also looks like tensions are rising in the northern city of Kirkuk, where about 20 people were killed in car bombings this week. Things will get much worse in Kirkuk, before a referendum on the future of the city that must be held this year.

The national intelligence estimate (NIE) on Iraq has finally corrected, perhaps modified is the word, the administration's rhetoric on who supports the insurgents in Iraq. While it noted that Iran supports and arms Shi'a militias, it downplayed its role in the terrorist insurgent campaign. It did not, however tackle the issue of the sources of the huge funds that keep that Jihadist/Ba'athist campaign going.

Iraq has decided to expel the Mujahideen Khaq, an Iranian socialist-Islamic opposition group that has been in Iraq for two over decades. The group had recently published a 'list' of 31,000 Iraqis it claimed were paid agents of the clerical regime in Tehran. It has also claimed that Iran is supplying weapons to Iraqi 'groups'. In doing this, it apparently broke a condition not to meddle in internal Iraqi affairs.

Kuwait's royal chief of the National Security Council, their own Rice or Hadley, or Kissinger if we go back in history, stated in an interview on Alarabiya TV that he is a 'liberal Islamist' and that he has 'good relations' with Jihadists, who are not necessarily terrorists. He said that 'anyone who is not an Islamist is not a Moslem'.... whatever that means. Sounds like logical contortionism to me, a veritable political casserole, but then perhaps he is trying to straddle a thin political line here.
Cheers
Mohammed