The International Herald Tribune: Iraqis Shiites see diminishing U.S. support for their postwar domination
BAGHDAD, Iraq: Iraq's ruling Shiites have voiced growing concern that the United States is subtly shifting support to Sunni Arabs, the bulwark of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, in a bid to salvage 43-months of democracy building in Iraq and tamp down violence. The perceived re-energized bid to draw the Sunni insurgency into Iraq's political process marks, in the eyes of anxious Shiites, a worrisome and major alteration of American policy in a period that has seen growing strains in the U.S.-Iraqi relationship.
Shiites in Iraq were not alone in sensing the change. "There is much talk of such a shift, and it is in part driven by the (American) desire to contain Iran," said Vali Nasr, an expert on Shiites who lectures at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
OK, kids, ponder that one. We overthrew a stable, secular albeit brutal Sunni regime and handed at least nominal power over to the Shi'a majority. We've maintained 140,000 troops in this hellhole to suppress domestic Sunni resistance and support the Shi'a dominated government, and now we're "frustrated with the inability of Shiites to govern??" Gosh, who would have guessed?
When asked for a response, the president's senior policy advisor had the following comment:
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