Britain's
Daily Telegraph, the country's best-selling broadsheet, has an
amazing scoop (so far picked up only by its sister-paper in the States, the
Chicago Sun-Times -- and the
Culcutta Telegraph): Paul Wolfowitz's real inspiration in going to war with Iraq was not, it seems, Ariel Sharon and the Likud, but... his Arab girlfriend. The lady in question is Shaha Ali Riza, a senior World Bank official who was born in Tunis, grew up in Saudi Arabia and holds an international relations masters degree from St Anthony's College, Oxford.
As the Telegraph says:
"It would amaze the detractors who depict Mr Wolfowitz as part of a narrow-minded Jewish lobby that one of the most important people in his life is, in fact, an Arab woman whose job is to promote gender equality in the Middle East and North Africa. It will doubtless also surprise many of his supporters."
Something, I suspect, of a typical British understatement!
