Still Hope For Iraq

Despite the church bombings this weekend.

Ayatollah al-Sistani has condemned them:

Iraq’s top Shiite Muslim cleric condemned as “hideous crimes” the coordinated bomb attacks on five churches in Baghdad and Mosul that killed at least seven people and marked the insurgency’s first major attacks on Iraq’s minority Christians.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani said in a statement that Sunday’s assaults on churches “targeted Iraq’s unity, stability and independence…”

“…We assert the importance of respecting the rights of Christian civilians and other religious minorities and reaffirm their right to live in their home country Iraq in security and peace.”

It looks like he understands the problem. Amazingly, even Mooky al-Sadr’s guy got into the act:

“This is a cowardly act and targets all Iraqis,” Abdul Hadi al-Daraji, spokesman for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, told Al-Jazeera television.

Unfortunately, I’ll bet we won’t be hearing this from the imams across the border in Iran, or from the loony bins that are many of the mosques in Saudi Arabia. This is why Iraq is so fundamental in the war on the fundamentalists.