And 1,400 years later.....

....nothing has changed.
It is becoming pretty obvious that when George W. Bush Dick Cheney decided to invade Iraq for oil and the power it brings that he put the US in the middle of a religious conflict that has continued since the death of the prophet Mohammad.
Shiites resist isolating Sadr
Politicians and clerics support the leader and view U.S. opposition to him as interference.

NAJAF, IRAQ — One of Iraq's most influential Shiite clerics rejected a U.S.-backed proposal to isolate Shiite extremists in the national government, saying the country should govern itself with the help of anti-U.S. firebrand Muqtada Sadr, according to politicians who spoke with the cleric Saturday.

Shiite politicians met with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in this Shiite holy city, and then said they had thrown their support behind Sadr, who demands a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq rather than the temporary increase under consideration in Washington.

"The Sadr movement is part of Iraqi affairs," said Haider Abadi, a leader of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party. "We won't allow others to interfere to weaken any Iraqi political movement."

Ali Adeeb, another member of the Dawa Party, said Shiite leaders, including the prime minister, would resist U.S. efforts to sideline Sadr and his Al Mahdi army.

The majority shiites see the Sunnis as the problem not Sadr and think the solution is to drive the Sunnis out. Even the right wing Hot Air says

Shiite first, Iraqi second. I don’t know where we go from here, except maybe home.

If the US sides with the majority Shiites they will incur the wrath of the neighboring Sunni governments like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan who will come to the aid of the Sunni militias making Iraq the front line of the 1400 year old Shia - Sunni conflict not the front line of the war on terror. And yes, this was the outcome predicted by many who understood the region.