While Bush fiddles...

... his little Mesopotamian democracy project continues to burn down. Nancy Youssef report for Knight-Ridder, Shiite leaders in Iraq denounce U.S.03/27/06:

Top Shiite political leaders condemned U.S. forces on Monday for raiding a suspected Shiite terrorist cell in what they said was a mosque and killing more than a dozen people, exposing the growing schism between the country's largest and most powerful sect and U.S. officials.

Shiite leaders charged that Sunday's raid in northeast Baghdad was an attempt by the Americans to distance themselves from the sect. They claimed that U.S. officials were trying to give Sunnis more power than they won in the Dec. 15 election because they feared that Iraq would be controlled exclusively by Shiites, rather than shared with the Sunnis. Shiites represent 60 percent of Iraq's population and won a near-majority of seats in the parliament.

A widespread loss of support from the Shiites could make Iraq almost impossible to govern and could put U.S. forces stationed in Iraq in a precarious position.

"There is a policy by the American administration and its ambassador in Iraq to regain balance (between opposing Shiite and Sunni forces) by creating combating fronts," said Salam al-Maliki, the minister of transportation and a member of firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's party.

The Shi'a are the party that won the December election that was yet another turning point that turned out to be another bump on the road to more intense civil war. They've been Our Side, in other words. You know, the ones who control the government that's "standing up so we can stand down"?

You're running a heckuva war, Dubya!

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