And even Juan Cole says ... of the hellish place upon which he's blogged
so coherently since the beginning of BushWarII ... it's very very bad
now.

I'm sure this will all come as a surprise to George W. Bush.

Jude

Attack on Shia Shrine in Iraq Sparks Angry Protests
Gareth Smyth,  The Financial Times
Wednesday 22 February 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022206J.shtml

    An explosion in Iraq has destroyed the golden dome of one of the
most revered shrines in Shia Islam sparking nationwide protests and
sectarian reprisals against Sunni mosques despite appeals for calm from
government and religious leaders.

    Wednesday's early morning blast at the Askariya shrine in Samarra,
150km north of Baghdad, devastated the tombs of the tenth and eleventh
of the 12 Imams believed by Shia to have been infallible successors to
the prophet Mohammad.

    Early reports suggested armed insurgents, possibly in Iraqi police
uniforms, entered the shrine and left explosives. US troops and Iraqi
police cordoned off the area and began house-to-house searches.

    No one was killed in the attack on the mosque in Samarra. However a
Sunni cleric was killed, police said, at one of 17 Sunni mosques in
Baghdad fired on by militants.

    The Samarra attack appears to be a deliberate provocation of Iraq's
Shia community, who make up around 55 per cent of the population and
comes after two deadly explosions targeting Shia civilians in Baghdad on
Monday and Tuesday.

    Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shia, declared three days of
mourning and called for Muslim unity. He said the interim government had
sent officials to Samarra.

    Mouwafak al-Rubaie, national security advisor, blamed Sunni
militants of Ansar al-Sunnah, a group linked to al-Qaeda that has been
responsible for a trail of violence in Iraq since the 2003 US-led
invasion. Mr Rubaie told Al Arabiya satellite television such militants
intended to "to pull Iraq toward civil war".

    There has been growing concern among Shia Muslims, in Lebanon and
Iran as well as Iraq, at attacks by mainly Sunni insurgents on Shia
civilians and religious figures in Iraq.

    Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shia cleric, asked people to
protest peacefully in their home cities rather than travel to Samarra,
which has a majority Sunni population.

    Ayatollah Sistani has consistently urged his followers to show
restraint and not be goaded by attempt to incite sectarian war.

    Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, echoed the call for
restraint, calling the attack "a criminal and sacrilegious act" that was
"a blatant attempt to ingnite civil strife and disrupt the process of
forming a new government in Iraq".

    "This is a most shocking outrage against a holy shrine of the Shia
community, so all of us have to understand the anger people feel when
such defilement of their shrine takes place."

    He was confident, however, that Iraqis would continue to demonstrate
the "remarkable resiliance and determinination" that they had shown in
the past to secure a peaceful and democratic future, as illustrated by
high turn-out in the December elections.

    The Sunni Endowment, a government body that maintains Sunni shrines,
condemned the blast and said it would send a delegation to Samarra to
investigate.

    The Askariya shrine in Samarra is the tomb of both Imam Ali bin
Mohammad, who died in 868AD, and Imam Hassan bin Ali, who died in 872AD
and was the father of Imam Mohammad bin Hassan, whom Shia believe went
into hiding in 941 and will return one day as 'the Mahdi' to inaugurate
a period of just rule on earth before the Day of Judgement. ++

Iran Blames Bush
Sunni Shiite Clashes
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Juan Cole
http://www.juancole.com/

Shiites came out in the thousands all over the Shiite south on Wednesday
to protest the bombing of the Askariiyah shrine in Samarra. A Sunni
mosque was set afire. and a Sunni clergyman was assassinated.

The hardline Shiite Mahdi Army has come out of Sadr City and is all over
Baghdad. They are clashing with Sunnis in Basra.

Sunni leader Tariq al- Hashimi threatened reprisals for reprisal
killings.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim blamed the US for holding back the Badr Corps.

Grand Ayatollah Sistani called for nonviolent street protests that he
must know won't be nonviolent.

Iran is blaming Bush.

The threat of terrorism and attacks on Americans just went way up.

Shiite protests Roil Iraq
2/22/6 [earlier]

Tuesday was an apocalyptic day in Iraq. I am not normally exactly
sanguine about the situation there. But the atmospherics are very, very
bad, in a way that most Western observers will miss.

The day started out with a protest by ten thousand people in the Shiite
holy city of Karbala, against the Danish caricatures of the Prophet
Muhammad. These days, Shiites are weeping, mourning and flagellating in
commemoration of the martyrdom of the Prophet's grandson, Imam Husayn.
So it is an emotional time in the ritual calendar. when feelings can
easily be whipped up about issues like insults to the Prophet. An
anti-Danish demonstration in Karbala is a surrogate for anti-American
and anti-occupation sentiment. The US won't be able to stay in Iraq
withiut increasing trouble of this sort.

Then guerrillas set off a huge bomb in a Shiite corner of the mostly
Sunni Arab Dura quarter of Baghdad, killing 22 and wounding 28. Another
9 were killed in other violence around Iraq. These attacks are
manifestations of an unconventional civil war.

Then real disaster struck. The guerriillas blew up the domed Askariyah
shrine in Samarra. The shrine, sacred to Shiiites, honors 3 Imams or
holy descendants of the Prophet. They are Ali al-Hadi, Hasan al-Askari,
and his disappeared son Muhammad al-Mahdi. Thousands of Shiiites
demonnstrated in Samarra and in East Baghdad, against this desecration.

The Twelfh Imam or Mahdi is believed by Shiites to have disappeared into
a supernatural realm (just as Christians believe in the ascension of
Christ) from which he will someday return.

Some Shiites think his second coming is imminent. Muqtada all-Sadr and
his followers are among them. They are livid about this attack on the
shrine of the Mahdi's father.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also a firm believer in the
imminent coming of the Mahdi. I worry that Iranian anger will boil over
as a result of this bombing of a Shiite millenarian symbol.

Both Sunnis and Americans will be blamed. Very bad ++

It is not enough to be compassionate; you must act.
-- The Dalai Lama