[Future Snake Eater]

Wow. You seem to have a skewed view of it all. For some reason you associate the Shi'a as pure victims in all of this. Trust me, there has been no "holding back." There has been plenty of sectarian murders on both sides.

Sunnis don't use car bombs on us (at least, not in Baghdad). Shi'ites use EFPs against us and have killed a hell of a lot of U.S. Soldiers with 'em. They're also directly associating with a nation very, very hostile to the U.S. that has also openly threatened the use of nuclear weapons.

So now tell me, who is the big bad guy sect now?

[JasonC]

The Sunnis are. Sure, Sadr's guys want us out too, and they want to be free to murder the Sunnis with impunity, and they work for Iran. They are also going to win. Not a damn thing you can do about it, either. Except, since it was readily foreseeable the instant we went in, we could have been leading them the entire time and have marginalized their bastards along the way. We didn't, and we left the winning political endstate lying around for Iran to pick up, discarded like a bad penny. They picked it up, and it is trumps. We lose.

[JasonC]

I do not have to like any of it for it to be true. Mistakes have consequences. Our political choices in Iraq were kindergarten naive and they predictably blew up in our faces. Irretrievably so, given the state of the home front. That's all she wrote, Iran wins.