Update [2006-2-23 11:26:52 by Steven D]: Death toll now at least 110 people:

The hardline Sunni Clerical Association of Muslim Scholars said 168 Sunni mosques had been attacked, 10 imams killed and 15 abducted since the shrine attack. The Interior Ministry said it could only confirm figures for Baghdad, where 90 mosques were attacked in Baghdad, one cleric was killed, and one abducted.

Officials said at least 110 people had been killed across the country in violence believed triggered by the mosque attack.

Three journalists working for Al-Arabiya television were found dead in Samarra, the site of Wednesday’s Askariya mosque attack. Al-Arabiya is viewed in Iraq as favoring the United States.

Second Update [2006-2-23 12:24:8 by Steven D]: Australian Broadcast Corp. now places the death toll at 130. In addition, The Seattle Times is reporting that four US soldiers from the 101st Airborne have been killed by an explosive device north of Baghdad.

Third Update [2006-2-23 12:52:46 by Steven D]: Wapo says number of American deaths now up to seven.

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While President Bush and his seemingly unfathomable desire to turn over our ports to a dubious company controlled by the royal family of the United Arab Emirates dominates the American political and media landscape, sectarian killings continue to rise in Iraq following the destruction of the Askari mosque, a Shi’a shrine, yesterday in Samarra. Here’s the latest from Reuters:

Police and military sources tallied at least 78 deaths, mostly of Sunnis, in the two biggest cities Baghdad and Basra in the 24 hours since the Samarra attack. Dozens of Sunni mosques have been attacked and several burned to the ground. […]

A bomb blasted an Iraqi army foot patrol in a market in the religiously divided city of Baquba, killing 16 people, including eight civilians, and wounding 21.

It was not clear if the total of 53 deaths in Baghdad included over 40 bodies found at a nearby village which has seen previous attacks on Sunnis by Shi’ite militias. Nor was it clear if the Basra death toll of 25 included up to 11 Sunni rebel suspects hauled from a prison overnight by men in police uniform and left shot dead around the mainly Shi’ite southern city.

The killings happening so fast they can’t keep track of them. Oh, and those negotiations to allow more Sunni representation in a “national unity” government? Also dead:

The main Sunni political group pulled out of U.S.-sponsored talks on joining a national unity government, blaming the ruling Shi’ite Islamists for attacks on Sunni mosques and dozens of killings since Wednesday’s suspected al Qaeda bomb attack that destroyed the Shi’ites’ Golden Mosque in Samarra.

The main Sunni religious authority made an extraordinary public criticism of the Shi’ites’ most revered clerical leader, accusing him of fuelling the violence by calling for protests.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, pressed ahead despite the Sunni boycott with a meeting of political leaders that he had called to avert a descent toward a “devastating civil war”. His office could not say who was present at the talks.

So who is to blame for the attack of the Askari mosque? Well, Reuters’ claims it was “Al Queda terrorists”, but unfortunately their story has nothing substantive to support that claim, other than this statement by (who else) our Lady of Condoleeza:

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is visiting the Middle East, echoed calls from President George W. Bush and the United Nations for Iraqis to pull together and not be pushed into sectarian strife by a bloodless but highly symbolic attack blamed on al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“The only people that want a civil war in Iraq are the terrorists like Zarqawi,” she told reporters. “The Iraqi people are working under extremely difficult circumstances to bridge sectarian differences.”

Nice work Condi. Best to lay the groundwork for blaming Zarqawi now, before any facts come along which might muddy the water. I’m not saying it couldn’t be Al Zarqawi, but he seems to be an all too familiar scapegoat for Bush and Co. whenever (ahem — euphemism alert) STUFF hits the fan in Iraq. Why is that I wonder? Oh yes, maybe because it supports their storyline that we’re fighting THEM over there so we don’t have to fight THEM over here. A storyline they continue to push no matter how ludicrous and obscene it has become.

Of course, it’s so useful to have a scapegoat when bad things happen. Unfortunately, certain other governments, also run by religious extremists, seem to think we are the most convenient party to pin this latest fiasco on:

Tehran, Iran, Feb. 22 – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed the “intelligence agencies of the occupiers of Iraq and the Zionists” on Wednesday for carrying out the bomb attack on the holy Shiite Muslim shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra. […]

. . . He was referring to the United States, Britain and Israel, the three governments that the Iranian theocracy regularly blames for the bombings in Iraq.

Iranian-backed Shiite clerics in Iraq and Lebanon repeated Khamenei’s charges that the United States was behind the attacks. Abdul-Aziz Hakim, the Iranian-backed leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, blamed the United States for the bombing.

Khamenei called the bombing “another stain in the black record of the occupiers of Iraq”.

Yes, folks, even though this is pure propaganda in my opinion, it will be taken seriously by a large number of Shi’ites in Iraq. And in one sense, Khamenei is right. It was Bush’s misguided invasion of Iraq which set these forces in motion. Now years of repressed sectarian hatred are coming to the fore, much as happened in the former Yugoslavia, except this time it wasn’t the death of a dictator that caused it, but our own incompetent war-mongering President. In that sense, his administration does deserve the blame for what has happened in Samarra Wednesday, for it all flows directly from Bush’s monumental mistake to invade Iraq in the first place.

Most of us have been warning that this would be the inevitable result of Bush’s folly. Our invasion and occupation of Iraq was bound to lead to this result sooner or later. Indeed, I’ve long claimed that civil war had already broken out, though at a lower level of violence than we are seeing today.

What the Samarra attack insures is that Bush can’t pull out our forces (or pull them back to their secure bases) and still claim victory. There are too many sides in this war that don’t want a peaceful resolution just yet. From the foreign jihadists there (led by Zarqawi or not) to the Mehdi Army of Muqtada al Sadr, from the Iranian government to the indigenous Sunni insurgents, there are simply to many parties who have little to gain from peace, and much to gain from chaos. To have ever believed that Iraq would turn out otherwise was the height of ignorance, foolishness and arrogance.

Not that this should surprise those of us who’ve been paying attention. After all, the life of George W. Bush is the epitome of those very same qualities. Too bad for us so many of our fellow Americans were willing to suspend their disbelief when they entered the voting booths in 2000 and 2004. Now all of us will be paying the price for decades to come.

Cross posted at Daily Kos.