Oh Shi’ite!

As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq’s future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites’ organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country. The burst of Shiite power — as demonstrated by the hundreds of thousands who made a long-banned pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala on Tuesday — has U.S. officials looking for allies in the struggle to fill the power vacuum left by the downfall of Saddam Hussein.

With Huey and Cobra helicopters swooping low overhead, protesters at the bridge chanted “Go home, America,” while Marines, some with bayonets fixed to their M-16 rifles, faced them … After more than four hours on the bridge, the Iraqi men heard one of the detained men had been released. They let the convoy pass. As the protest disbanded, one Iraqi man hysterically called out to U.S. troops, telling them “Leave!” and saying “We need freedom!” Another man rubbed his index fingers together and shouted “Saddam and U.S.A. – they’re friends!” Capt. Samuel Bakion reached under his flak vest to pull out his dogtag chain, which was also strung through his wedding band. He showed it to the Iraqis, telling them his wife was waiting for him back home in Minneapolis. “I want to leave,” Bakion told the protesters. “I want to go back to America.”