The war to start all wars

So 3 1/3 years after the invasion of Iraq, how's the flowering of democracy in the Middle East, one of the promised benefits, going? Billmon:

Let's see. We've got: Israeli Jews fighting Lebanese Shi'a and Palestinian Sunnis; Palestinian Fatah militants who've stopped fighting Hamas militants, but only because they're both fighting the Israelis; Saudi Sunni fundamentalists issuing fatwas against Hezbollah Shi'a fundamentalists; Egyptian Sunni fundamentalists backing those same Hezbollah Shi'a fundamentalists; Iraqi Sunnis killing Iraqi Shi'a and vice versa; Iraqi Shi'a (the Mahdi Army) jousting with Iraqi Shi'a (the Badr Brigade); Iraqi Kurds trying to push Sunni Arabs and both Sunni and Shi'a Turkomen out of Kirkuk; Turks threatening to invade Kurdistan; Iranians allegedly shelling Kurdistan, Syrian Kurds rebelling against Syrian Allawites who are despised by Syria's Sunni majority but allied with the Lebanese Shi'a who are hated and feared by the House of Saud and its Sunni fundamentalist minions. Oh, and American and Israeli neocons threatening to bomb both Syria and Iran.

Civilians being killed at the rate of 100 per day in Iraq (oh, my bad--not "killed," but "liberated").

The scariest item in Billmon's list, and they're all scary, is "Iranians allegedly shelling Kurdistan." Here's the Reuters report:

A senior Iraqi-Kurdish official accused Iranian forces on Thursday of shelling Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq.

Othman Mahmoud, interior minister of the Kurdish regional government in the north, said shelling was going on along the border about 170 km (105 miles) north of the city of Sulaimaniya.

Who knows how true this is--most reporters in Iraq are likely unwilling or unable to get anywhere near the region to verify it. But this is just what we don't need now--an actual causus belli for Bush against Iran, instead of the bogus lies about their nuclear program.