Bad, Bad Day in Iraq

A Shiite shrine was blown up in Iraq today, setting off what appears to have turned into a day of mass protests and reprisals:

Unknown attackers blew up one of the most revered shrines in Shiite Islam early Wednesday, causing its century-old gilded dome to collapse. The attack north of Baghdad triggered nationwide protests and a spate of reprisals against Sunni Muslim mosques, raising fears of broader civil strife.

The bombing of the Askariya shrine, also known as the Golden Mosque, in the city of Samarra caused no known casualties, but it sparked an outpouring of rage by Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims. The blast appeared designed to further inflame sectarian tensions between the Shiites and the Sunni Arab population from whose ranks the bulk of the country's insurgency is drawn.

Despite calls for calm by political and religious leaders, angry Shiite militants attacked more than two dozen Sunni mosques in retaliation, burning down two of them, new agencies reported. At least six people were reported killed in the violence, including three Sunni clerics.

Reading this article you don't get a very good sense of what's going on over there. I read this earlier today and thought "Yet more sectarian violence", but apparently it's much worse than that. Juan Cole has this to say:

Tuesday was an apocalyptic day in Iraq. I am not normally exactly sanguine about the situation there. But the atmospherics are very, very bad, in a way that most Western observers will miss.

This AP article tells us more about the widespread violence and protests in an article dishearteningly titled "Mosque Attack Pushes Iraq Towards Civil War":

Large protests erupted in Shiite parts of Baghdad and in cities throughout the Shiite heartland to the south. In Basra, Shiite militants traded rifle and rocket-propelled grenade fire with guards at the office of the Iraqi Islamic Party. Smoke billowed from the building.

Shiite protesters later set fire to a Sunni shrine containing the seventh century tomb of Talha bin Obeid-Allah, companion of the Prophet Muhammad, on the outskirts of the southern city. Police found 11 bodies of Sunni Muslims, most of them shot in the head, in two neighborhoods of Basra, police Capt. Mushtaq Kadhim said. Two of the dead were Egyptians, Kadhim said.

Protesters in Najaf, Kut and Baghdad's Shiite slum of Sadr City also marched through the streets by the hundreds and thousands, many shouting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans and burning those nations' flags.

Now I'll be the first to tell you I don't know anything about the situation on the ground in Iraq. But people who do know better than me seem to think that the fallout from this attack is going to be severe and continuing. In other words, it sounds like what's going to happen as a result of this bombing will put those cartoon protests to shame. It seems unlikely that one incident can push Iraq over the edge into full-on civil war but Iraq has certainly moved in that direction almost since the invasion, and if any one incident could provide that final push this could certainly be it.