"Al-Qaeda's war is political in nature and not religious at all"

Omar has a great post about al-Zarqawi and his true drive:

Zarqawi let goes part of his pride and retracts part of his the threats against Iraqis (especially the Sheat). Al-Arabiya TV reported that Al-Qaeda in Iraq-through the same website they used to declare war on Sheat-has excluded a few Sheat groups from the hit list and this-in my opinion- proves that Al-Qaeda's war is political in nature and not religious at all. This war is targeting anyone and anything that can move the democratic process forward as we said in a previous post.

The updated announcement excluded Sheat groups led by:

1-Mahmood Al-Hasani (a firebrand cleric and one of the most extreme in his views. He also claims to be the messenger of Imam Mehdi, the awaited savior of the Sheat who vanished some thousand years ago).

2-The group of Al-Khalisi (another extreme cleric).

3-(guess who?) the famous and the one and only Muqtada.

Al-Qaeda explained that the previous 'warning' was meant to address the SCIRI, the Daw'a party (led by PM Jafari) and other parties that joined the political process including the INC of Chalabi.

Obviously it's not humanity that- out of the blue-woke up in Zarqawi's heart but it's rather that he realized that he could use some help form groups that share similar views for Iraq.

Emphasis mine. This seems like good news to me. By trying to co-opt Muqtada al-Sadr, Zarqawi stands to gain in the Shi'ite community and gain power politically. To this point, it's been terrorism. Interesting developments.

We've got to find and eliminate Zarqawi as fast as possible.