Most of the attacks on Sunni mosques over the last week took place on the fringes of Sadr City, a vast Shiite slum where the Shiite militia responsible for much of the violence, the Mahdi Army, functions as an unofficial police force. To some Baghdad residents, the mosque attacks were as much about the crime growing out of Baghdad's poverty and general lawlessness as they were about sectarianism.Makes it seem a little less like a country on the verge of a civil war when you consider this.
Will somebody not rid us of this troublesome cleric?
UPDATE: These two articles quoted by Instapundit highlight another feeling I've had since the bombing of the shrine: that the press is simply reporting on violence that has been ongoing in Iraq but are now ascribing Samarra as the cause and concluding that the civil war is nigh. And of course they continue to ignore progress in the midst of war.
