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Some SCIRI supporters suspect that al-Sadr was behind an attempt on Aug. 24 to assassinate al-Hakim's uncle Mohammed Said al-Hakim. A bomb exploded outside al-Hakim's home, injuring him and killing three. Al-Sadr has denied any involvement in that attack. Moments before last week's blast, al-Sadr was across town at the grand mosque of Kufa, delivering a sermon in which he condemned the attack on the older Hakim. "It was the act of criminals and should be punished," al-Sadr said.
In Washington, officials acknowledged the intensity of the struggle for supremacy among the Shi'ites. But they thought it "inconceivable," as one put it, that any Shi'ite could bomb his religion's holiest site. "It would be like a Catholic blowing up the Vatican," said the official. That may be so, but the miserable truth for the U.S. is that it almost doesn't matter whether the bombing was the work of someone within the Shi'ite community or Baathists. Either way, it foreshadows violence among Iraq's various groups. For an occupying force--as the old imperial powers learned the hard way--keeping public order in such circumstances is the hardest of all tasks. Sooner or later, everyone hates the outsider. The occupation of Iraq has been a mess for months. It just got a whole lot messier. --With reporting by Timothy J. Burger and James Carney/Washington