Is this what Muslims believe?

Suicide bombers carried out simultaneous attacks on Shiite Muslim shrines in Iraq on Tuesday, detonating multiple explosions that ripped through crowds of pilgrims. At least 143 people were killed and 430 wounded ? the bloodiest day since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Unofficial casualty reports, however, put the toll in Baghdad and Karbala as high as 223.

I don't know what this is supposed to accomplish for al Qaeda. Maybe this:

But some Shiites lashed out at U.S. forces. Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Hussein al-Sistani, blamed the Americans for not providing security on the holiest day of the Shiite calendar.

Of course, that could just be journalist spin, but there's also this:

"This is the work of Jews and American occupation forces," a loudspeaker outside Kazimiya blared. Inside, cleric Hassan Toaima told an angry crowd, "We demand to know who did this so that we can avenge our martyrs."

These are the times that try Iraqi souls. They have to decide how much they want freedom and peace and determine whether they're willing to stand up to the terrorists, the Ayatollahs and the dark ignorance in their own society and demand a secular democracy based on tolerance and recogniton of human rights. If they aren't we can't do it for them. This reflexive blaming of Jews and Americans is just idiotic.

A mob of Iraqis assaulted U.S. troops and medics who tried to control crowds and help wounded at Kazimiya, pelting them with stones and forcing their convoy of Humvees back into a nearby walled outpost. Two soldiers suffered broken bones. When the Iraqis tried to storm the outpost, U.S. soldiers fired tear gas to disperse them.

I remember a video report early on where U. S. Troops were not allowed near Shiite holy sites where resistors were holed up and firing at them. They didn't want us near those places. But they can't have it both ways. Still, I wonder if this childishness is really respresentative of the whole society.

Follow up: The WaPo report contains this:

Hisham Salman Abboud, one of the guards, said there was such a surge of people trying to get into the shrine that the guards had stopped searching them. "In the rush of people, we could not stop everyone and search them. We were told not to search people. It was a very big mistake."

Fortunately, this blaming of the U.S. doesn't seem to be the consensus. Iraqi bloggers are pointing out that this is exactly what Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was threatening in his celebrated memorandum.