Iraq - From Saddam to Shia to Iran

President Ahmadinejad of Iran visited Iraq recently to renew ties with the Iraqi leadership. Not so long ago, Iran and Iraq were bitter enemies, engaged in a long and bloody war. The U.S. was on the side of Iraq and fed weapons and money to Saddam.

Iran is a Shia nation. Iraq's government is led by Shia Muslims. Iran and Iraq are getting cozy. Mr. Bush may still be rattling his sabers, but his war to oust the Sunni, Saddam, and save the Iraqi oil fields for his friends has gone awry, and his harried cries about Iran building a nuclear bomb are taken less seriously by the rest of the world every day.

Iran is stepping in to assist in putting Iraq back together again. Thus, Iran has connected a town near Basra with electricity. The British tried for five years get electricity to this town with no success.

Iran has also backed projects to build power plants in Shia-dominated cities in Iraq. In addition, Iran has offered Iraq a $1 billion loan "for projects to be handled by Iranian companies..."

All of this, of course, makes the U.S. look stupid and incompetent as we have been unable to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure in spite of spending billions upon billions since we blew everything up during the brief period of actual fighting.

But all is not sweetness and light. There are those, such as the Sunni Iraqis and American politicos, who believe Iran is trying to undermind whatever stability there is in Iraq - which isn't much. The Sunni minority is not happy that Iran is not interested in assisting areas which consist mostly of Sunnis. In fact, the Sunnis have held angry protests against the Iranian president, claiming that his actions are creating more violence.

All of this again portrays just how complicated and delicate is the situation in Iraq. Unfortunately, the bumblers in Washington still have no clue what to do and every day we throw additional millions of borrowed money down the drain while more of our military men and women along with innocent Iraqi civilians are killed for absolutely no reason whatsoever!