TERRORISM: Suicide bombers plow van into mosque

A whole new form of suicide bombing has taken place. Four suicide bombers detonated a large car bomb in a place of worship while mosque-goers were inside praying to Allah. Fourteen civilians died and at least 19 others were injured.



I am baffled at this. A person who believes in his cause to fight for the belief in Allah, to the point he is willing to commit suicide, knowingly kills his own people in a place of worship, who were praying to Allah makes absolutely no sense at all. Is this an entirely new form of desperation? How can this help your cause at all?


[edit on 3-12-2004 by Banshee]

This is easy to understand. It�s the Sunni�s attempting to provoke the Shiite�s into a civil war. You see, the war in Iraq is a proxy war with Iran. The Shiite�s used to be on the side with Iran but were co-opted into the coalition about 6 months ago. This left only the Sunni�s outside the political process.

We had been trying to negotiate with the Sunni�s for some time, trying to get them to peacefully give up their ties with Iran. While the Sunni�s had Fallujah they felt secure in their power base and have refused to join with the U.S. The attack on Fallujah signaled the end of negotiations and the beginning of an effort to wipe out the Sunni�s forces.

Now that their base of operations has been wiped out, the Sunni�s have lost a LOT of support.

Meanwhile Iran is facing a LOT of pressure on it�s borders and in the U.N. They cannot come to the Sunni�s aid directly. They cannot even maintain their level of support (where do they send it? Who can they trust? Who has been compromised?). Also, who knows what we found on some of those computers we captured? Perhaps we have compromised a major portion of Iran�s infiltration network.

So the Sunni�s are VERY desperate right now. They need for our coalition in Iraq to come unglued. A couple more losses like Fallujah and they will cease to exist as a fighting or political force.

Thus the attack on the Mosque. I would expect many more, to try to provoke a Shiite response. I don�t think we�ll see many from the Kurds due to the fact they are much harder to hit.

Smells like the doing of American militairy/intelligence, killing terrorists in the mosgue(and some colateral damage :civialians)and blaming the same terrorists of blowing up their own mosque.
Really smart, disinformation in its glory!

U must hand it to them they are improcing their faul tactics

motionknight, in your attempt to misplace the blame of this incident on the US (military) intelligence apparatus, would it also be safe to assume that the same US (military) intelligence apparatus was behind Seventeen Kurdish militiamen killed in Iraq suicide car bombing in the hopes of getting the Kurds involved in the supposed hope of a Sunni-Shi'ite civil war?



seekerof

Seekerof - Well said!
I hardly see this as an American lead mission/coverup. I see it as i previously stated earlier as an act of amazing desperation.

MrNice, that was an excellent summary of what can be a somewhat confusing situation.

Way above, and voted accordingly.

This is not a good thing. I have been there 7 times (the sandbox as a whole, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi, Turkey etc) in my 17 years in the USAF. I never had any problems and don't really blame the common guy in the street who practices Islam. It's this kind of craziness that I cannot and will not stand for and am willing to die trying to change. The problem lies in the fact that even if we work with a legit elected by the people government in Iraq someone is going to be pissed off because WE are involved. We are always suspect. And no not just because of GWB. I think that he is a breath of fresh air. The reason is he wears his actions on his sleaves for all to see. I work at the Pentagon with a group called Executive Travel and travelled with SecDef Cowen and Rumsfeld. I have read and transferred the PDB to him for his meeting. I know what intel the President gets and you guys beating Bush over the head have no idea what you are talking about. You are a product of a CNN generation and a left leaning media. I didn't vote for Bush Sr. and didn't vote for Bush this time. I am a libertarian. So you can't just say I am a "republican" and write my words off.

The President deals with things you might find hard to imagine (and no I ain't telling I will go to jail, read ain't happening). Why is it that when you see a President go into office he looks so healthy and when he leave he looks like cow manure...PDB's. So save all the rants for the mirror and vote libertarian if you want change. The Dems are another side of the same coin.

Originally posted by superdude
Is this an entirely new form of desperation? How can this help your cause at all?

Since the cause is the re-establishment o the caliphate preceeded by the promotion of general anarchy in teh middle east, this is perfectly sensible. These guys aren't good pious beleivers who have been pushed too far.

I don't understand tho, why is a Shi'a mosque in a Sunni neighborhood? The Sunnis ad Shi'a are locked in a death struggle, one that technically sprouts from a determination of which of their prophet mohammed's descendants, which lineage, is supposed to hold the caliphate (think c.f. the pope in the dark ages at the seat of an empire). THe sunni say its one lineage. The shi'a disagree and say its another. For this the shi'a are branded as something like apostates by the sunnis. And as everyone knows, nonbeleivers are nothing compared to apostates, apostates are the worst, they're will agents of the devil and the like.

So murdering evil shi'a in their vulgar profane anti-mosques isn't much of a problem for a militant fundamentalist. I assume it works vice versa.

Its especially ironic since, of course, there is no more caliphate, and I don't think that there is even anyone that can serve as a descendant and sucessor of either line no?

Iraq of course isn't simply divided inti shia and sunni. The tribal affiliations are also tremendously important there, along with general ethnic identity. The Marsh Arabs, for example, aren't aligning with anyone as far as I know. The Kurds and their Peshmerga warrriors are sticking to their own territory. They're an iranian people and are more or less interested in their own security. The Fallujans, as has been seen, are made up of old baathists and regime families. Most of the problems are comming from what the 'sunni triangle' was, the central, more modernized and urbanized elite that made up the core of saddam's support, and before saddam the baath party in general. They're not simply going to give up because they are told to. So there are lots of factional lines active in this situation.