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Wednesday's attack hit Samarra's Askariya shrine, also known as the Golden Mosque. The mosque holds the tombs of two revered 9th-century imams of the Shiite branch of Islam, including Hassan al-Askari, father of the "hidden imam," al-Mahdi. Many Shiites believe that Mahdi is still alive and that his reemergence one day will signal the beginning of the end of the world.

But someone did. So what did the Shias do? "Iraq's most influential Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, called on Shiites to take to the streets, but peacefully." However, he warned separately, if Iraq's security forces weren't up to the task of protecting shrines, certainly religious militias would be.

Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, "ordered his militia to defend Shiite holy sites across Iraq," reported the AP. This article at Washington Post has all the gory details.

Forty men in Baghdad, shot. In Baqubah, three dozen people going to a protest were killed by terrorists who had set up a roadblock/checkpoint. If that weren't enough, a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing 9 Iraqi soldiers, 2 civilians, and injuring 19 other people. The suicide bomber didn't survive, of course.

A Sunni muezzin (the guy who calls the faithful to prayer) was killed around the time of the morning prayer. Also, a journalist and "two of her crew" were kidnapped and killed. She was 26, and worked for "al-Arabiya, a Dubai-based news channel."

Of course, no crisis is complete without the Iranian President's point of view on it. So what did Mahmoud Ahmadinejad say? Using the reasonable side of his brain (for once), he said, "they invade the shrine and bomb there because they oppose God and justice."

However, the other side was talking about the U.S. and Israel. As he referred to us: "defeated Zionists and occupiers." Unfortunately, he's not the only one who thinks so.

In the U.S. defense, Bush promised U.S. help rebuilding the mosque.

Sammy Standard blogs at The Academy for the Constitutionally Challenged :: Whataloadacrap!