Condoleezza Rice showed how knowledgeable the Washington experts on the Middle East and Islam really are when she said in January 2007: “There’s still a tendency to see these things in Sunni-Shia terms. But the Middle East is going to have to overcome that.”
They still haven’t overcome it, Ms. Rice. Maybe they’re too busy battling “Islamophobia” to focus fully upon this problem. Sunni-Shi’ite Jihad Update: “50 Killed in Iraq by Truck Bombs, Explosives and Gunfire,” by Tim Arango for the New York Times, July 3 (thanks to Kenneth):
BAGHDAD “”A Kia truck with explosives hidden in its cargo of watermelons exploded on Tuesday in Diwaniyah, a largely Shiite city in southern Iraq, leaving at least 40 people dead, including a 6-year-old boy, local officials said. It was the deadliest in a string of attacks on Tuesday in central and southern Iraq.
The truck bomb in Diwaniyah was detonated near the city”s main fish and vegetable market, where local officials had reopened the streets to vehicles less than five months ago after keeping them closed for years over security concerns. The area was crowded with morning shoppers at the time of the explosion.
“What did we do wrong?” said Saad Abbas, a teacher who awoke later in a local hospital, where he was being treated for wounds to the head and chest. “I was shopping for my family, and I felt a huge explosion. I fell to the ground, and the next thing I know I am in the hospital.”
What did you do wrong? Being Shi’ite.
Over all, the attacks on Tuesday left nearly 50 people dead and more than 100 wounded. The variety of methods used is indicative of what Iraq still faces on a daily basis, more than six months after the American military departed and more than nine years after it invaded: a huge truck bomb, improvised explosives and assassinations by gunfire….