Iraq Holds Its Breath, waiting for the fallout from the Samarra mosque bombing

[maddezmom]

The latest attack on Samarra's Golden Shrine exposes the limitations of the massive security crackdown under way in Iraq. With tens of thousands of U.S. troops devoted to quelling the sectarian violence in and around Baghdad, other cities and regions have become more vulnerable to attack by militant groups like al-Qaeda. The Iraqi forces that are meant to pick up the slack are woefully inadequate, allowing the militants to slip past security cordons and pick their targets almost at will.

The purpose of the new attack is not hard to divine: Shi'ite militias have been lying low since the start of the U.S.-led military “surge” earlier this year, and al-Qaeda has been trying to provoke them back into the fight. There have been several attacks on Shi'ite religious sites, but most have failed.

It's not clear what security lapses allowed the attack IN Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, but they must have been especially egregious. The shrine, one of the holiest in Shi'ite Islam, was said to have been under extraordinary protection after the Feb 22, 2006, explosion that destroyed its golden dome. That attack, blamed on al-Qaeda, set off a wave of retaliatory attacks from outraged Shi'ites and plunged Iraq into sectarian war—the one the current American “surge” is meant to subdue.

The latest attack occurred around 9 am on Wednesday and destroyed the shrine's two minarets. Early reports said the towers were struck by mortars or rockets, but it now seem more likely they were brought down by explosives placed within or close to them.

more:http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1632256,00.html?xid=rss-world