Post-US Iraq: Welcome to Shia-stan

[sinkingfeeling]

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/14/9422243-post-us-iraq-welcome-to-shia-stan

BAGHDAD – It was a cold night in Baghdad. I was standing on the roof of Saddam’s information ministry listening to a televised speech by President George W. Bush. He gave Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave, or else.

Regardless of President Bush’s intent in waging this war, what it wound up doing is replacing a dictator with a Shiite-run state that is close to Iran. This could not have been the plan.

Welcome to Shia-stan.

Now, as American troops leave Iraq after almost nine years of patrols, IEDs and countless meetings with tribal elders, it is abundantly clear that the Shiites have won this country.

So Iranians are coming in huge numbers. It doesn’t mean that Iran is taking over. Iran is, after all, Iraq’s neighbor, and Iraq can use the tourist dollars. But it certainly does show the direction Iraq is leaning and with whom Iraqis are connecting.

America’s efforts to strangle Iran with sanctions could end up being undermined by the very nation the United States went to such great efforts to create.