Jun 13 2007
Mosque Bombing Looks To Be Inside Job?
al-Qaeda is on its heels and needs to ratchet up the violence in Iraq before the US plans start working big time. So no one is surprised that a key Shiia mosque has been bombed again. The same mosque that was used to ignite the destabilizing fighting a year ago:
The destruction of the Golden Mosque’s famed dome on Feb. 22, 2006 was viewed as a turning point in the Iraq war.
Thousands of Shiite militiamen poured into the streets, attacking Sunni Arabs and their mosques in Baghdad and beyond. Tens of thousands were killed and many more displaced in the vicious cycle of revenge that followed.
This time, however, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, whose followers were accused of driving last year’s bloodshed, quickly issued a statement saying Sunni Muslims were not to blame for today’s attack. He said it was the United States that was ultimately responsible.
“No Sunni Muslim would ever carry out such an attack,” Sadr said . “No muslim would inflict such damage on themselves. Rather the occupation’s hands are behind this incident in order to instigate destruction.”
Well it wasn’t the US. But al Qaeda has shown no bounds in its bloodlust for power. Reader ‘dave m’ noted on a comment in another thread the interesting fact that this mosque is supposedly heavily guarded 24×7 since the attack last year, yet there was no fighting or casualties in the bombings:
raqi police at the site in Samarra said they heard two near simultaneous explosions coming from inside the mosque compound at about 9 a.m. but they did not see any attackers, the U.S. military said in a statement.
The blasts collapsed the two minarets that were left standing after last year’s bombing. No casualties were reported.
Police and special forces commandos have guarded the shrine since last year’s attack, and it was not immediately clear how the assailants were able to plant their explosives. The guards at the site were detained for questioning, Maliki said.
Well, I guess the case could be made it is better to martyr a mosque than a human being. But clearly the fact this attack did not shed human blood, but did get by a phalanyx of guards, shows it was meant to be a PR stunt more than anything else. My guess is most of Iraq is bloodlusted out and ready to find a peaceful way to govern their country. Extremist emotions cannot be sustained indefinitely in a large population. This time I doubt the gambit will work as well, if at all.
Update: Would Shiia extremists bomb their own cherished mosque to help a withering al Qaeda?
Authorities have evidence that Wednesday’s bombing of Al-Askariya Mosque in Samarra was an inside job, and 15 members of the Iraqi security forces have been arrested, a U.S. military official said.
Seems they would. Wonder how that will go over in the Muslim/Arab street? I can see the headlines now “Shiia extremists fake death of mosque to help al Qaeda win hearts”…. Anyone think the extremists are winning this now? When you have to blow up your shrines to fake an attack you have to be pretty damn desparate. No wonder the locals are turning on the extremists.
While I have no doubt whatsoever that al-Qaeda would bomb a Shia holy place in order to inflame internecine Sunni-Shia conflict, it is a bit harder for me to believe – without some further info besides bald, unsupported supposition – that Shia – either Iranian or Iraqi – would blow up a Shia shrine.
I’m not saying its impossible – just that Occam’s Razor says Sunni or al-Qaeda involvement is far more likely, especially in light of the fact that al-Qaeda is a Sunni sponsored and constituted terrorist group – and why would Shia Iranians be supporting Sunni terrorists?
There are many possible scenarios and all reflect so poorly on the US occupation that all call , once again, for the expulsion of that occupation, preferably a self-expulsion.
Despite Strata’s misdirection, it is perfectly clear the occupation has failed completely in four years to bring minimal law and order preventing such attacks to Iraq. Therefore, and with the knowledge that the American leadership lied its way into the war, re the WMDs, it is also perfectly logical for alSadr to assume an exorbitant degree of
both criminal ineptitude and possible complicy in such attacks.
The Americans are working with a segment of Sunni nationalists against al Qaeda, against the wishes of the native Iraqis who want America simply to leave and allow Iraqis alone to deal with foreign
al Qaeda. When America meddles thusly in a land brimming with those who want it out and will trick it at will, all kinds of agent provocateruing, double-agenting and triple agenting are possible.
American ignorance of Iraq is so supreme, certain “foreign”al Qaeda could pose as native Iraqis with one native tribe’s help and trick the occupiers into doing their dirty work-and the reverse is also true.
Strata’s duplicity echoes the national talk jabber chickenhawks.
Supposed success of the surge menas we should stay–failure of the surge means we should stay–or Vietnam’s bloodbath will be repeated.
Mike “chickenhawk” McConnell, Clear Channel’s national talk
maunderer said exactly these two things in the past several months!
Of course we could have stayed in Vietnam until the present , taken tens of thousands more casualties,and the South Vietnamese government would still not have been strong enough to fend off whatever ensued when we left, but this is never mentioned, nor is the mention of a 30 year continual draft which would have been necessitated–with the national talk jabberers of course doing Dick Cheneys when it came to serving and helping “stave off the bloodbath”Israel’s Likudniks and war profiteers from the military industril complex want everyone to believe America should now stay in Iraq to stem, Henry Kissinger being, ironically, one of the not-so-behind-the scenes devious proponents thereof.
NO, AJ, it really doesn’t matter who did Samarra.
It is enough that more than four years into a failed occupation, the
ineffectual interlopers were either powerless to prevent it or more directly complicit, just as one of the most popular Iraqi leaders, if not
the> most popular leaders charges.
http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=11130
William Lind has something for Dale of Atlanta.