Does This Qualify?

Here's Petraeus on the prospect for violence due to the bombing on the mosque:

Petraeus said that although sectarian killings have been decreasing in Baghdad, "we're going to have to see what the impact of this tragedy in Samarra is on that." If there is an increase in sectarian killings, "This attack may well prove to be the nail in the coffin of the security plan," an analyst tells the LAT.

Does this headline qualify as a nail?

Several Sunni mosques in Iraq attacked

The reports suggest "relative calm" despite this attack. But the city is in a lockdown too. And Petreaus's claims of a decrease in sectarian violence are pretty thin, or at a minimum misleading. The violence is less concentrated now in Baghdad, not less over all, at least according to this report to Congress by the Pentagon:

Three months into the new U.S. military strategy that has sent tens of thousands of additional troops into Iraq, overall levels of violence in the country have not decreased, as attacks have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar, where American forces are concentrated, only to rise in most other provinces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday.

Ever hear the term "herding cats"?

Sadr blames the U.S. for the mosque attack. Sunnis blame Shiite militias. Bush blames al Qaeda. Who do you blame?

Everyone notes suspicion immediately fell on the mosque's guards, who were detained for questioning. But the WP interviewed some witnesses who said "a special unit of commandos" went to the mosque on Tuesday night and forced the guards to leave.

Swell army they have there. "Forced the guards to leave"? Hmmm.

Meanwhile, while the U.S. media continues to carry the administration's water claiming the mosque attack was done by al Qaeda, Juan Cole gives us an update on what is likely the truth:

An Iranian embassy official in Baghdad admitted that the Samarra attack was probably the work of the Iraqi Baath Party. Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad had blamed the US, while the US fingered "al-Qaeda." The Baathists are the best candidate. Samarra is a Sunni Arab city with a strong Baath cell, and the Baathists are secularists who have a history of being willing to shell religious edifices for political reasons (e.g. attacks on Najaf in spring 1991). My readers who like conspiracy theorists should pay attention to this story; an Iranian observer in Baghdad would likely have some intelligence on this matter. In the first Sawt al-Iraq story cited above, Iraqi Sunni vice president Tariq al-Hashimi also implicitly blamed the Baathists.

Bush can claim that the problem in Iraq is al Qaeda all he wants. It will never make it so. The Baathists are a powerful, well organized force that is quite capable to overturning majority Shiite rule and apparently has a strategy to do so .... despite American troops caught in the middle.

And the beat goes on ......