[nicky g]

"Only the Sunni who had the run of the country under Saddam and have shown they don't want true democracy will regret our involvement. "

This myth is becoming more and more widespread and is quite dangerous. Saddam was a Sunni Arab and lots/most of his entourage were Sunni Arabs (more specifically, Sunni Arabs from or from near Tikrit, his hometown) . But the increaingly common idea that Saddam-era Iraq was some sort of South African style ethnic/racist state where all Sunni Arabs "had the run" of the place/controlled government for Sunni Arab purposes/good do and say what they liked, and ran around oppressing Kurds and Shi'ites as their slaves is wrong. There were Shi'i figures in the Ba'ath. All opponents/independent thinkers were oppressed under Saddam, whether Shi'i, Kurdish or Arab Sunni. Sunni Arab areas probably suffered less on the whole, in part because they never mounted a rebellion comparable to the Shi'i uprising after teh 1991 Gulf war, but the idea that "the Sunnis"/all Sunnis were in charge, and are now simply pissed off that they aren't any more, is wrong. A specific group of people, who were mostly Sunni Arabs, were in charge, and they were repressive of all sections of society regardless of their religion or ethnic affiliation. Saddam's Iraq was much closer to a totalitarian regime state than a South African style one.