AL QAEDA DENIES IT, SAYS US IS TO BLAME

Well, I'm certainly glad we got that sorted out....

A letter purported to come from al-Qaeda denied responsibility for bombings that killed at least 117 people during a Shiite Muslim festival in Iraq, blaming American troops instead — but it also called Shiites infidels.

"The American troops have carried out a massacre to kill innocent Shiites in Karbala, their (Shiites') infidel city, and in Baghdad," said the letter, received on Wednesday via e-mail by the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper and shared with The Associated Press in Cairo.

"We say to the Muslims that we are innocent of this act, and that we are not guilty of worshipping as Shiites worship, except that we believe in God."...

al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, is a predominantly Sunni militant group, and draws its members from some of the most conservative streams of Sunni thought — segments of Muslim society that consider Shiites heretics.

It must be an arab thing...sending a letter saying, in so many words, "it wasn't us who tried to murder you dirty stinking heathen pigs".

I just don't get it.

Meanwhile, however, it seems the masses aren't taking the bait:

Sunni and Shi'ite leaders stood side by side in Baghdad Wednesday to urge Iraqis to avoid a civil war after suicide attacks on a holy day killed scores of Shi'ite worshippers.

Thousands of Shi'ites converged on their holiest Baghdad shrine to mourn the more than 70 of their brethren killed in a bombing Tuesday that occurred at nearly the same time as an attack killed dozens of others in the city Kerbala.

Hundreds of Shi'ites waved black flags of mourning and backed their clerics' plea for unity, chanting: "We are brothers, Sunnis and Shi'ites, and we will not sell our country to foreigners."