MEANWHILE, BACK IN IRAQ...

I've read before that Christians in Iraq have been under an increasing threat because of our "liberation."


Bombings signal rising threat for Iraq's ethnic minorities
The US blamed Al Qaeda in Iraq for Tuesday's coordinated suicide bombings that may have killed as many as 400 Yazidis in the worst attack of its kind since the war began.
By Sam Dagher | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the August 17, 2007 edition

Yazidis, like other ancient communities in Iraq such as Christian ChaldoAssyrians, Sabean Mandaeans, and Shabaks, are facing extinction, particularly in their traditional areas, in what is known as the Nineveh plains. Many blame militant Sunni Arabs as well as Kurds seeking to consolidate their grip on the area that borders their region.

During a trip to London last month to raise international awareness of the crisis facing Iraq’s minorities, Hunain Qaddo, a Shabak leader, told the BBC that his people were "facing a genocide."

In a pattern of almost mass exodus of minorities from Iraq, only about 5,000 Sabean Mandaeans are left in Iraq from an estimated 25,000 in 2003, according to testimony given by Suhaib Nashi, a community leader, to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom in Washington in July.

"The situation is unbelievably bad for minorities," the Rev. Canon Andrew White, vicar of St. George Church in Baghdad, told the commission. "It is difficult to imagine how much worse things could become, but in reality they could become considerably worse."