Baathist hands behind Samarra attack

[Barrett808]

Source: Press TV

An informed source at Iran's Embassy in Iraq has said Baathist hands are involved in the attack on the holy shrine of two Shia Imams in Samarra.

"Baathist supporters of former Iraqi dictator Saddam have detonated the two minarets of the shrine in an insulting and shameless act," the source told Mehr news agency in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

"It is difficult to come and go into Samarra because of the tight security following the blast so we don't know the exact level of damages or casualties," he added.

Wednesday's terrorist attack follows a February 2006 bombing that destroyed the shrine's golden dome.

The 2006 attack, believed to have been carried out by al-Qaeda militants, angered followers of the Shia faith worldwide.

Read more: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=13039§ionid=351020101

[bemildred]

1. What good are enemies if you can't blame stuff on them?

I don't really see how the Iranian embassy staff can know much about the perps. They themselves admit "It is difficult to come and go into Samarra because of the tight security following the blast so we don't know the exact level of damages or casualties". But he is still quite sure that it must have been his enemies that perpetrated this dastardly deed.

[Barrett808]

2. Here's Juan Cole's take:

(His blog is where I got the link.)

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.

http://www.juancole.com/2007/06/samarra-fallout-surge-not-working-sadr.html

[bemildred]

3. Could be. It seems like in inside job.

Much would seem to depend on the affiliations of the various parties that were supposedly guarding the ruins of the shrine. It is hard for me to get my mind around the sort of half-wit thinking that would conclude that this sort of thing would be useful to do in the first place.

[Barrett808]

4. Looks like the guards have been arrested for complicity

Or something.

[underpants]

6. Yeah how exactly does someone so secretively and quietly rig up that kind of blast?

When the first mosque explosion happen (google Bush gets excuse) I was wondering how something like that could go on and no one noticed a thing.

:shrug:

[leftchick]

5. that makes more sense than so called "al-q in mesopotamia"

they have so over played that bogeyman.

<snip>

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.

http://www.juancole.com/labels/Iraq.html