"..The neocons & Bush were convinced that empowering the Shiites at the Sunnis’ expense would help pacify Iraq..& the entire Arab world.."

David Rose in a good piece in Vanity Fair, here

"....new evidence suggests that the Sunnis were offering the same deal as early as 2004—one that was eagerly embraced by commanders on the ground, but rejected out of hand at the highest levels of the Bush administration.....

“From July ’04 to mid-’07,” he points out, “you can directly attribute almost all those K.I.A. [killed in action] in the Sunni regions of Iraq to this fatal error, and if we hadn’t been fighting the Sunni, we’d have had a lot more resources for dealing with Shia militia leaders like Moqtada al-Sadr in places such as Baghdad. It didn’t have to happen. Those lives did not have to be lost...... 

Feith, like his immediate boss, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, had no desire to reach out to the Sunnis. He blamed them for keeping Saddam in power, and considered one of the occupation’s goals to be reducing their influence. (Feith says today that he cannot recollect an approach on behalf of Wischkaemper.) The neoconservatives, together with President Bush, were convinced that empowering the Shiites at the Sunnis’ expense would help pacify not only Iraq but also the entire Arab world. “In their view,” says James Clad, “the Shia could lead the way toward an ‘Islamic reformation’ that would finally separate religion from politics.”