Posted on 06/12/2007 11:32:39 PM PDT by HAL9000
BAGHDAD, June 13 (Reuters) - An explosion struck a revered Shi'ite Muslim shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra on Wednesday that was badly damaged in February 2006, senior Shi'ite officials and a witness said.The witness said two minarets at the Golden Mosque were damaged in the blast. Last year's attack on the mosque triggered a wave of sectarian violence in Iraq that has killed tens of thousands of people.
(Excerpt) Read more at alertnet.org ...
Too critical, so I’ll put an end to it. I announce here that I am the 12th Iman, praise be to Allah. My orders to my followers: lay down your arms and rally around Bush the Great, a man of caring and Supreme Goodness of Character (SGC). Hug one another, Sunni and Shi’te. Let the women come out from their underclass status, they are now equal to the men and the animals. It’s now okay to depict any prophet in artwork, and any image of anything whatsoever is now allowed, praise be to Allah and Bush. Dance, drink, light up, and lighten up my children. The Americans and the people of Israel love you, so love them in return. Love your mother and your father, but not too literally my friends. And sit down on Sunday nights to view “John From Cincinatti” and thus learn from the mature followers of the 12th Iman, who I am what I am, hot damn.
One less accused shrine to a false prophet!
Were any artifacts looted?
“Were any artifacts looted?” you ask. Only, apparantly, a short-lived flicker of hope for peace. And some cookies and milk left for Santa Ali-Claus in 1321.
Destroy all of them. kill them all. That would be a start.
Trouble that could easily be solved with 24x7 saturation bombing.
Bush refuses to spend to protect our borders or to care for veterans. He is a worse scumbag tha Clinton.
Take away their guns, cars and matches..
“I’m not sure AQ is Iran’s lapdog. AQ are fiercely orthodox Sunnis. Iran is Shi’ite. Sunnis and Shi’ites will gladly kill each other if you let them. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” only works for so long with these nutjobs.”
Thank you for bringing some sanity to this discussion.
Sure looks like shabby construction.
I'm pretty sure, Shiites were guarding it.
“Sadr has called for calm”
Sadr sleeps with camels and it has to be soon realized that he has no real authority if he is taken out by one of our fine marine snipers, under the guise of just war actions of course. He and his group hate us whether we allow him to remain alive or not. So what’s the big diff? Let’s call him a casualty of war and get on with it.
The suspects in the bombing came from the Salahadin Emergency Response Unit, not the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Brigade of the 1st Iraqi National Police Division (3-3-1 INP), according to Multinational Division North. “I can confirm ... that Brig. Gen. Duraid, deputy commander for the National Police in Samarra, did arrest the Emergency Response Unit Iraqi Police commander and 12 of his Iraqi police who had been guarding the mosque at the time of the explosions,” Major Tage J. Rainsford, the spokesman for Major General Benjamin Mixon, told FOX News this evening.
DJ Elliott, the editor and researcher behind The Fourth Rail’s Iraqi Security Forces Order Of Battle, noted the Salahadin Emergency Response Unit [ERU] is essentially the provincial SWAT unit. The ERU is known as the 3rd ERU battalion of the Salahadin Provincial Iraqi Police. The unit designation explains the earlier confusion between the units (3rd ERU verses the 3-3-1 INP). The 3-3-1 was responsible for security of the mosque, but was slated to move to Baghdad this month as part of a newly formed Military Police brigade.
Earlier in the day, conflicting reports indicated that there was a conflict between two units, and in one case a skirmish, although the units were not identified. A likely scenario is the Salahadin Emergency Response Unit was assigned to secure the al-Askaria mosque, and al Qaeda infiltrators took advantage of the change in command to destroy the minarets.
http://billroggio.com/archives/2007/06/samarra_mosque_bombi.php
“For centuries they’ve polluted the world with their sickness,”
but before that, they knew more than the west in the late middle ages on some subjects. I don’t have a problem with Islam in history; they have done what anyone with power and numbers has done. The christian crusades and various territorial actions (including the new world) are little better if that.
religion has always been a good mechanism to manipulate people into either fighting or supporting a war (this includes christianity, the vatican is one of the bigger offenders in western history post-western-empire, even without including such important unintended events as the sack of constantinople by the 4th crusade) but the major problems with islam **today** are 1) radical wahabbism (thank you saudi arabia) and 2) Iran.
Unfortunately, neither seems particularly amenable to 21st century western solutions.
Between this and what’s going on in the Gaza Strip, i’m convinced there is no absolutely hope for these islamists. They should be completely isolated and allowed to destroy themselves. There have no ability to reason, they destroy their own governments, their own shrines, their own future.
It proves a point however. If the islamists have no little regard for their own future, it proves they have abslutely no second thoughts about attacking western civilization.
Looks like their security was worthless. They must have had the al Keystone Cops.
Iran sees Putin being belligerent, and the democrat party falling over each other to be the best dhimmi (calling WoT a bumper sticker, etc), with Bush on his way out in half a year... they see a great time to ‘dig in’ and fortify what they’ve been angling for on several fronts.
12th Imam bump
Yes, but a solid percentage of Iraq citizens listen and obey Sadr. After another day has gone by, and the entire region is facing rising conflict, we need some real leadership in the Mideast. I would hope Bush stops wasting time on his immigration sideshow and put everything he has into trying to solve the Mideast. It’s time to send in the Money, Guns and Lawyers for real, shake a big stick while really talking to everyone in the region, and send Condi to sit down with people like Sadr to at least access his sanity from a tableside seat. Maybe the head of the UN can join her, and the heads of Hamas and Fatah, the Lebanon crews, the Prime Minister of Israel, and the head of Syria, all sitting down together, locking the door, and solving the entire matter before countries like Turkey and others really start to play.
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