The Huffington Post Says It's Bad

Let me follow up on that post a couple down. Things in Iraq have turned very bad and there is a lot of talk about the country being plunged into civil war. Well, they are short of that on about 1 account. There are not armed factions trying to seize control of the governmental apparatus. Right now we have people trying to disrupt or disassemble peaceful governing of the nation, so we're not that far of the mark. I suppose all that's really left is for everyone to get their own national flag an then we have all the other pieces of the pie.

Aw Hell, I think they've already done that too.

At any rate, several people are sounding the alarm. The Huffington Post has a lot of dire headlines:

Tipping Point Of Full-Scale Civil War...

U.S. Ambassador Says Iraq On Brink Of Civil War... Daytime Curfew Instated... 140 Iraqis Killed Since Wednesday...7 US Soldiers Killed... 184 Mosques Attacked Or Destroyed, 10 Clerics Killed, 15 Abducted...Gunmen Execute 47 At Fake Police Checkpoint...

is that hyperbole? Maybe, but it doesn't look good from any angle. Even the US Ambassador to Iraq says they're about to fall into full scale civil war.

Many claim that the tipping point was the attack on a Shiite Shrine in Iraq. The Shiites believe that Muhammad's family (the 12 Imams) were basically prophets themselves. They are thought to be the source of human understanding of Islam and the Koran. These were his successors. Sunni's, on the otehr hand believe Muhammad did not actually choose a family successor as the 'authority' of the faith. This rift in leadership and the varried teachings that followed is the basis for much of the Sunni/Shiite strife through the centuries (I am GREATLY simplifying this).

Anyway, these 12 Imams are (obviously) sacred to the Shiites. the 11th (Hasan al-Askari) and 12th (Muhammad al-Mahdi) were buried in a holy city in Iraq. the bombing that took place this week was at the shrine that marks the graves of these Imams, the prophet/forefathers of the Shiites. It is hard to conceive a more serious attack against that which the Iraqi Shiites find holy. This is an escelation beyond anything we have seen before and at some point people who have not wanted to live together peacefully in the first place will stop caring or trying.