corrente

A massive car bomb timed successfully to hit during Shi ia Friday morning prayers at the Iman Ali gold-domed mosque, one of the holiest of shrines in Iraq, in the holy city of Najaf. One of George W. Bush's worst nightmares? Probably not. With his pristine conscience, he sleeps too well to have nightmares.

This morning, I woke up to an NPR report on this real, daytime, nightmare, broadcast right from the scene; the actual explosion caught on tape, only an oddly distant thud, at least on the radio in an American bedroom, the haunting lilt of sung prayer suddenly suspended, replaced by expressions of disbelief, horror, despair, by people who don't feel in control of the most fundamental aspects of their own existence.

AP is reporting the number of deaths, thus far, at 75; l50 more were injured enough to be taken to hospital.

The blast dug a crater about 3 1/2 feet wide in the street in front of the mosque and destroyed nearby shops. People screamed in grief and anger as they searched the rubble for victims. Nearby cars were torn into twisted hunks of metal by the explosion.

Accompanying the AP report, a link to a "Slideshow" of the event, if you have the heart and stomach for it: I didn't; right below, a link to this story, "Ceremony Honors Iraqi Police," an irony so cheap I almost wished I hadn't noticed. But then, ironies abound here:

No coalition troops were in the area of the mosque out of respect for the holy site, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jim Cassella said in Washington.

And what do we do with this irony: Among the dead, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, only moments away from having offered a sermon and prayers for the unity of all Iraqis.

"I saw al-Hakim walk out of the shrine after his sermon and moments later, there was a massive explosion. There were many dead bodies," said Abdul Amir Jassem, a 40-year-old merchant who was in the mosque and said the cleric had prayed for Iraqi unity.

The mosque itself appeared to have suffered only minor damage, with some mosaic tiles blown off.

Well, that's something, I guess.

Ayatollah al-Hakim returned to Iraq in May from exile in Iran, an army at his disposal, but he turned out to be an elder statesmen, wise and pragmatic, who counselled his brethren, including one of his own nephews who has become a leader of a younger Shiite faction that wants to see an Islamic republic in Iraq, to be patient with Americans and mindful of Iraqi national unity. As this BBC profile makes clear, here was a man who had every reason to dislike and distrust Americans.

Five of Ayatollah Hakim's brothers and more than a dozen other relatives were killed during three decades of struggle against Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

In 1991, after the first Gulf War, President Bush senior encouraged Iraqis to rise up against their leader.

The opposition, including the Kurds of the north, believed this would mean the US would back a rebellion.

His discovery that he was wrong occasioned the start of his years of Iranian exile.

The Ayatollah did oppose American occupation in principle, but his opposition remained non-violent, he publicly disavowed Iranian style theocracy, and he chose to have his brother participate in the American appointed Governing Council. What now?

Al-Hakim's supporters and family are fingering Saddam supporters for this atrocity, Viceroy Bremer, too. If, as I understand it, a car bomb usually requires a driver willing to commit suicide, I wonder. The Iraqi Baathist party, made in the image of the Stalin-admiring Saddam, was higher on sacrificial other-destruction than on sacrificial self-destruction. Strange to ponder - in the last decade of Saddam's genuinely hated regime, no such suicide bombings took place against that regime. Against what is supposed to be seen as a benign "liberating" occupation, there are been two such bombings thus far.

Yes, Saddam ran a police state, and we seem incapable of running a state with so much as a barely adequate police function, but look at all the arms and explosives around Iraq. How many Iraqi's were really ever that committed to Saddam personally that, with the nearly complete disappearance of his regime, they would battle like this on his behalf? Curious. It does make one wonder what kind of Bin Laden inspired fundamentalism has infilitrated into Iraq. The better for us to do battle with it, we're told, by an number of useful idiots. Especially better there than here. That "Iraq as flypaper" meme is really catching on in the lower brain-strata of the right; Sean Hannity was recently so enamoured, I thought he might explode, right on air. Clever, incurious George.

Do any of these progeny of Dr. Pangloss ever wonder how Iraqis might view the notion of themselves and their country as flypaper-covered cannon fodder in the grand crusade against global terrorism? Perhaps some wealthy conservative might offer to finance a lecture tour of Iraq to a small team of distinguished conservatives, Andrew Sullivan, Wm Kristol, Fred Barnes, Jim Pinkerton, the goddess-warrior, Ann Coulter, well, there are so many from which to choose, who could explain all this directly to Iraqis.

I wonder if any conservatives bother to read a blog like Baghdad Is Burning? I recommend reading it regularly, and not because everything I read there confirms my own ideas. Because there, American readers can find an intelligent, thoughtful, anguished, authentic, female Iraqi voice, telling us, with the kind of detail weneed to hear, what our occuaption of their country feels like to a young woma who loathed Saddam, wants an Iraq run democratically by Iraqis, and writes in superb English. The only comfort I could find today I found there, in an epigraph on her cite: "...I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend..." Please, whatever Gods may be listening, please make that possible for both our countries, one of these days, and soon.

Oh, and BTW:

In violence elsewhere in Iraq today, an American soldier was reported killed and at least five others were wounded in two separate attacks on American troops.

In the deadly attack, one Fourth Infantry Division soldier was killed and three others were wounded when their convoy was hit by rocket-propelled grenade and small-arms fire near Suaydat, the American military reported.

Two other American soldiers were injured when their Humvee was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade near a mosque in Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, said Spec. Margo Doers, a spokeswoman at coalition command in Baghdad.

Yet another definition of American innocence: Thinking that because you are the most powerful nation on earth, with the strongest military ever known to humankind, "shock and awe" describes possiblities limited exclusively to you.