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The New York Times is Johnny-on-the-spot with not one, but two articles on the history of, and potential for civil war in, Iraq.

Some interesting tidbits:

Iraq is less a nation than an artificial entity drawn created by the British. In recent years, only the brutality of Saddam Hussein held its parts together.

The religious antagonism is particularly strong in Iraq: the schism between Sunni and Shiite Islam was sealed there.

Huh. Really?

Two days of mob violence last week after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine did not simply aggravate Iraq's sectarian hatreds. Like a near-death experience, the carnage seems to have shocked Sunni and Shiite leaders into a new realization of what civil war would cost, and new efforts to avoid it.

But what happens if such efforts--and frantic ones by Americans--prove incapable of stopping an all-out war?

Jeez--great question! Does anyone know ?

The greatest fear of leaders throughout the Middle East is that an unrestrained civil war, if it ever comes to that, would not only give birth to warring Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish enclaves inside Iraq, but that the violence could also spread unpredictably through the region.

No kidding? Yikes! Is this some new fear? We don't recall reading about it before the U.S., you know, invaded and toppled Saddam.

Must be new.

Some experts have advocated a negotiated breakup of Iraq into three main sectors for the main ethnic and religious groupings. But a violent crackup could not easily be kept stable.

It might well incite sectarian conflicts in neighboring countries and, even worse, draw these countries into taking sides in Iraq itself. Iran would side with the Shiites. It is already allied with the biggest Shiite militias, some of whose members seemed to be involved in the retaliatory attacks on Sunnis after the Shiite shrine bombing last week.

And Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait would feel a need to defend Sunnis or perhaps to create buffer states for themselves along Iraq's borders. Turkey might also feel compelled to move in, to protect Iraq's Turkoman minority against a Kurdish state in the north.

If Iraq were to sink deeper into that kind of conflict, Baghdad and other cities could become caldrons of ethnic cleansing, bringing revenge violence from one region to another.

Goodness, that doesn't sound good. Did anyone know about this? Ah, nevermind--we're sure that no one could have predicted it.

While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has proclaimed that the world has isolated Iran more than ever because of its nuclear ambitions, Iran has in fact tightened relationships with it local allies as events in Iraq have played out. In recent months, Iran has been deepening its alliance with Syria and the Shiite movement Hezbollah in Lebanon, and now it appears ready to strike up a friendship, backed by financing, with a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

Oh my, that's bad. And confusing--wasn't invading Iraq supposed to make us safer?

Well, it certainly is good of the Times to bring this information to our attention. But you know, we can't help thinking that a lot of it would have been really helpful to know, say, before we invaded.

Oh well--they probably didn't know.