OK-someone explain to me how this happens without anyone noticing it

[underpants]

This wasn't done with a missile or a carbomb that just drove up and detonated.

Is there NO security in such an important place?
Is there no one around for that long of time?
Is there no notice of a group of men carrying the explosives necessary to do this into the mosque without ANYONE noticing?
The curfew started, what, two days ago....and this was done at night... right?

I really don't understand.



The remains of one of the two minarets of the bombed Golden Mosque Shi'ite shrine is seen in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad June 14, 2007. (Sabah al-Bazee/Reuters)

[DS1]

1. They've already arrested the police they think did it

[leftyladyfrommo]

2. I'vwe read that it was an inside job - there were about 15

guards. And I think I just saw that 13 had been arrested.

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. Who's the 'they' and who's the 'them'?

The first bombing was also at night, with no casualties. Nobody claimed credit for it, but the US blamed the ubiquitous Al Queda - Shi'ites responded by turning on Sunnis in general, instead of Al Queda in particular, probably because the AQ presence is actually so small as to be virtually non-existant.

Now, after a year and a half of extreme sectarian strife, are we to believe that Sunni guards were watching a Shia shrine? Silly. That Shia guards blew up their own shrine? Sillier.

This time it happened after weeks of the press talking about how the Sunnis in Anbar have been turning against AQ.

I think it was another black-op job, meant to unite Sunni and Shia against AQ, just as the first one was.

[underpants]

7. We were THIS close

Honest

We were just about to turn the corner and then *poof* THIS happens :shrug: What's a world leader to do???

They will say that just as they said it about the first time and all of it is a lie, as you know.

[Virginia Dare]

8. Since it worked so well the first time..

they thought they'd try it again? :wtf: I saw an Iraqi man interviewed last night and said "they told us the terrorists did it". He sounded pretty skeptical.

What sect does AQ identify itself with, if any? This is why we are in such trouble over there, some of these grudges have been going on for a couple of thousand years, we're playing with giant kegs of dynamite.

[MADem]

3. Rockets, maybe?

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070613/tpl-uk-iraq-43a8d4f_6.html

That's what this headline says, though they aren't mentioned in the story itself.

[kenny blankenship]

4. the shrine was important to Shia Islam, but Samarra is now an area where Sunnis are stronger

Samarra is inside the area we fondly call the Sunni Triangle of Death, north of Baghdad.
Local security forces probably have a strongly Sunni character and either carried out the demolition themselves or stepped aside to allow non-uniformed Sunni militants to do it.
In Baghdad itself, the police are strongly Shia in composition and leadership, and their other name that they go by is "the death squads" --those anonymous guys who leave piles of tortured corpses in empty lots. American media has been very reluctant to explain to the public that the police (funded, equipped and to some extent trained by us) ARE the death squads whom we're trying to suppress in Baghdad, usually limiting themselves to observing euphemistically that the gunmen who carried so-and-so away to his death were wearing police uniforms.

In the case of the Samarra mosque bombings(s) and the Shia death squad activities in Baghdad, the involvement of the local police authorities is the unavoidable inference that must be made in view of the circumstances of these attacks. How could these attacks happen? How do you move truckloads of explosives into place around a famous public building? How do you move truckloads of dozens of captives and/or dead bodies around, along with their executioners, through a city in the middle of the night where police roadblocks and army checkpoints supposedly keep things locked down? Wouldn't you be seen and reported to the police? You can do these things if you are the police. It's the obvious answer. It's also pretty much inescapable as a conclusion. Don't hold your breath waiting for the US corporate media to speculatively put two and two together, though.

[karlrschneider]

6. I heard it was in the middle of the afternoon.

But I forget who reported it...could be wrong of course.

[LeftHander]

9. this was guarded by US Troops and Iraqi Troops and Police...

NPR reported yesterday that the "heavily guarded" shrine was attacked despite being watched by US troops the Iraqi Army and Police....

seems no mention of US Troops today.

[Parche]

10. HOLY SHEE ITE

Just like they guarded that ammo dump a few years back!! :hi:

[gollygee]

11. Before/after photos

:(

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. Except, AFTER the AFTER

those two minarets are gone, too. Now it's down to just the clock tower.