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Speculation Over Likelihood of Iraqi Civil War

With scores of fresh dead in Iraq, observers of the Middle East are waiting for the other shoe to drop and the country to descend into full-scale civil war between Sunnis, Shiites and possibly Kurds as well. The recent violence began after a major Shiite mosque was bombed by Sunni terrorists, destroying its golden dome and inflaming a country already fragile from daily terrorist attacks. Five new bombings rocked the capital of Baghdad on Tuesday after what had been a "lull" in the violence.

Speaking about the violence and the worries over civil war, U.S. President George W. Bush said Tuesday after a meeting with visiting Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at the White House that "The people of Iraq and their leaders must make a choice. The choice is chaos or unity. The choice is a free society or a society dictated by evil people who will kill innocents." The bombing February 22 of the al-Askariya Mosque, a Shiite shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad, has left more than 400 dead in attacks and reprisals since.

Doubts surround what would be done with the approximately 130,000 U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq in the event that a civil war would break out. Security analysts estimate that coalition forces would probably withdraw to defensible corridors as even with the amount of troops in the country now the Allies would have trouble restoring order. Whether or not the Kurds get involved would also determine if Turkey would intervene in order to protect the Turkmen minority living in Kurdish areas in northern Iraq.