Iraq is on fire

Police said two bombs that had been planted at the mosque overnight exploded at dawn. Some local officials in Samarra said the bombers were dressed in the uniforms of Iraqi security forces. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari, in one of several televised news conferences and appeals by Iraqi and U.S. leaders, said preliminary investigation into the bombing pointed to "infiltration'' of Iraqi security forces.

We have reports of Shia death squads operating in uniform. We have reports of Sunni bombers operating in uniform. And then there's the very public reporting that the Kurds have intentionally loaded the Northern Security Forces with members of their own militias.

Is the US training effort effectively training the combatant sides of the civil war?

Also, let me say very clearly I don't think this is a bad idea, but I include it to give an idea of just how dangerous Iraq has become.

U.S. military units in the Baghdad area were told Thursday morning to halt all but essential travel. Commanders feared that convoys might be caught up in demonstrations or road blocks.

And, despite the effort by US officials to downplay the possibility of a Civil War (Voice of America - written by a State Dept official,) there's this cold reality....

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's main Sunni Muslim bloc pulled out on Thursday of negotiations for the formation of a new government, blaming the ruling Shi'ite alliance for sectarian violence that has killed dozens of Sunnis in the past 24 hours.

"We are suspending our participation in negotiations on the government with the Shi'ite Alliance," Tareq al-Hashemi, a top official of the Iraqi Accordance Front, told a news conference.

Lastly, give a quick thought to the photographers and reporters who are risking their lives in an effort to cover this violence. Although their motivations are usually quite complicated, the reporters who work in war's hot zones do a great service to us and to history. One Al-Arabiya TV correspondent and two other journalists have already been reported killed in Samarra.

As a recent example of reportorial heroism, DemocracyNow had a phenomenal interview with Ahmed Mansur and cameraman Laith Mushtaq who were inside Fallujah, unembedded, in the US's April 2004 offensive. The world knows far more about what happened there solely because of these two men.