Shia and Sunni

I was listening to Seymour Hersh last night speaking about his recent article in the New Yorker about the US's plans for military action in Iran.

Here's a distillation of what I understood:

The US has aligned itself with Sunni nations in the Middle East, and has viewed the Shia as enemies. It views Iran as essentially a Shiite threat that is aligned with the Shiite Hezbollah. Dick Cheney views the greatest threat to the US as Iran gaining a nuclear weapon and then giving it to Hezbollah, which will then, according to his logic, detonate that weapon inside the US.

Therefore, we are supporting many extremist Sunni groups that are sympathetic to Al Qaeda, because we believe they are working against Hezbollah.

And, to pile on the logic, the only place we're making an exception to this rule is Iraq, where we are primarily under attack from Sunnis, of which Saddam Hussein was one. We are aligned with the Shiite government, while treating Shiite Muslims as a direct threat to US citizenry everywhere else.

That's... perfect. What could go wrong? Oh, wait.