The Askariya shrine has in Samarra has long been considered one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam. Er, make that HAD been, since some insurgents kind of, well, blew the place up yesterday. Needless to say, Shiites throughout Iraq are royally pissed off about the incident, and have attacked and set fire to dozens of Sunni mosques in retaliation. And while the initial blast caused no casualties, at least 19 Sunnis have been killed by Shiites out for revenge.

Of course, the retaliatory strikes are only going to serve to piss off the Sunnis, who in turn will seek revenge of their own. That, in turn, will piss off even more Shiites, and pretty soon you've got a never ending cycle of violence, and a hell of a lot of piss. Everyone ends up blaming everyone else, and soon no one even remembers what initially touched off the fighting.

The question then is not whether or not there will recriminations, but rather how much longer the killing will go on. And the answer, quite frankly, is that the killing will go on until everyone is dead. And as long as the women on each side keep giving birth, that could be a very long time indeed.

Beautiful, ain't it?