] Jerusalem used to be the direction in which the prophet
] Muhammad and the first Muslims turned to pray. In time,
] Muhammad changed the direction, or qibla, and Muslims
] began to pray facing Mecca, as they do today. All the
] Bush White House did was change the qibla of American
] Middle East policy from Jerusalem to Baghdad. While the
] present clique of White House ideologues assumed that a
] safe, stable, and democratic Iraq would reshape the
] region, Zinni, Brzezinski, and company still maintain
] that the peace process is the key. They don't know more
] about the Middle East than the Bush White House; they're
] just angry that someone replaced their absurd reductive
] paradigm with another, equally absurd reductive paradigm.

Good article.