Salon.com News | Melting pot of blood: "Years ago, George Bush the elder explained why he did not push on to Baghdad at the end of the first Gulf War: He feared the breakup of the Iraqi state. The most dangerous fissure was and is between Iraq's majority group, the Shiites, and the formerly ascendant Sunnis. Those divisions have now exploded into a horrific guerrilla war in which disaffected Sunnis increasingly target Shiites and Kurds. In the week after the Cabinet was presented to Parliament, Sunni Arab guerrillas went on a bombing spree that left some 200 dead and hundreds more wounded. The Bush administration had hoped that the new, elected government would attract the loyalty of alienated Iraqis, and that as a result the guerrilla war would wind down. Instead, Sunnis are furious that their representation on the Cabinet is still unclear and that their suggestions for Cabinet members have been rejected by Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari."

(Via Salon.)