Worst Attack Yet In Iraq

106 dead. The election seems to have really crushed the spirity of the insurgents, eh?

One overlooked issue in Iraq concerns Shiite vigilantes targeting former Baath Party members in a series of attacks of retributive violence. We hear a lot about the mainly Sunni insurgents attacking Shiites, but this is the first I've seen noting the other way around, and if that's the case, we'd better get our Johnny Reb and Billy Yank hats out, because we're headed to a Civil War.

What's most disturbing is that nobody's doing a goddamn thing about it:

The fighting between Shiite vigilantes and former Baath Party members, mostly Sunnis, is seldom investigated and largely overshadowed by the insurgency. The U.S. military is preoccupied with hunting down suicide bombers and foreign terrorists, and Iraq's new Shiite leaders have little interest in prosecuting those who kill their former oppressors or their enemies in the insurgency.

The killings have intensified since January's Shiite electoral victory, and U.S. and Iraqi officials worry that they could imperil progress toward a unified, democratic Iraq.

The notion that Shiites would not fight back against the insurgency in an other-than-purple-fingered way is horribly blind to reality. Of course they're going to take up arms. The problem is that this is not fighting the insurgency, it's just picking out ex-Baathists who've wronged Shiites in the past and killing them. This does nothing but escalate the violence, reduces the rule of law to vigilante justice, and

Here's an important chunk of the Knight-Ridder article:

Since the Jan. 30 elections, Shiite militants have stepped up their campaign to exact street justice from men who were part of the regime that oppressed and massacred members of their sect for decades. The assassins are working their way through a hit list of Saddam's former security and intelligence personnel, according to Iraqi authorities, Sunni politicians and interviews with the families of those who've been targeted.

Former Baathists have responded in kind, this month killing several Shiites allied with major political factions.

In a tactic borrowed from Sunni insurgents, Shiite militants have begun distributing printed death threats. One leaflet that lists several former Baathists targeted for assassination says, "We have given you the chance to repent for your crimes against the people of this country, but we have noticed during surveillance that you are instead trying to restore the glory of the atheist, corrupt Baath Party."

By the way, this is not necessarily happening outside of government control, but with the full backing of the government recently brought to power:

The assassination squads are widely believed to be from the Badr Brigade, the armed division of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's most influential Shiite political party and the biggest winner in the elections.

This reminds me of nothing so much as the janjaweed in the Darfur region of the Sudan. If they had an Air Force, the Badr Brigade would be attacking the Sunnis with air strikes.

Forget Tom Friedman's optimism, forget the misguided happy talk coming from the Administration. If Shiites are intent on crushing Sunnis, and insurgents intent on crushing Shiites, then we're already in a civil war, not heading toward one.