Destruction of holiest Shia shrine brings Iraq to brink of civil war...

A large explosion heavily damaged the golden dome of one of Iraq's most famous Shiite religious shrines in Samarra yesterday. (Photo: .Khalid Mohammed / AP









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Patrick Cockburn has this article in todays Independent (UK). The situation is getting out of control. With Iraq on the brink of civil war it is going to be more difficult to "redeploy" our troops, as Murtha has suggested.

Remember when Richard Pearle and Bill Krystol used to be on cable television almost every night telling us that this would just take a few months and that we would be greated as liberators? And these guys are still out there promoting their grandiose plans for remaking the Middle East!

Update:

Reuters is reporting that forty-seven people were killed in Baghdad in the 24 hours since the bombing of the shrine in Samarra sparked the worst sectarian violence the country has seen since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Gunmen sprayed a Sunni mosque in the city of Baquba, northeast of the capital, killing one person in the latest of dozens of such incidents that have left religious and political leaders scrambling to halt a descent into all-out civil war.

Three journalists working for Al-Arabiya television were found shot dead after being attacked while filming in Samarra, where the bloodless but highly symbolic bombing of the Golden Mosque at dawn on Wednesday provoked widespread protest.

In the bloodiest apparent reprisal for the attack on one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest site, men in police uniform seized 12 Sunni rebel suspects, including two Egyptians, from a prison in the mainly Shi'ite city of Basra and killed 11 of them.

Update #2

Riverbend, blogging from Baghdad, has written this chilling post.