John Kerry Explains Sunni-Shiite Unity Myth

This contains some grade-A bullshit, but there are also some very true points, everything colored in red is bullshit, and the valid points are in blue, my comments are in italic bold.

"I sat with the governor of Anbar, the sheikhs, and I asked this question to them I said point blank: Is there anything pressuring you or forcing you to make a decision tomorrow about reconciling between Shia and Sunni and he looked at me and smiled and said no, not really. They're all playing a game, they're jockeying for power, they're jockeying for the oil revenue, they're jockeying for the ultimate confrontation (Kerry was talking specifically about a confrontation in modern-day Iraq, although it serves to remind you how far off Sunnis and Shias are religiously and not just politically) which has come to either peacefully or not, you know, in another way, in this struggle between Shia and Sunni, which incidentally ladies and gentlemen goes back to 682, there's a wonderful book out there called the Shia Revival (Shia biased obviously) by Vali Nasr (Iranian) and it traces the history of this struggle. and it goes back really to when Ali (not Ali, his son Hussein) the grandson of the Prophet Muhammed, who was slaughtered in the desert, they cut off their heads, took their heads back to Najaf (actually Kufa, Najaf didn't exist, but we can forgive that cuz Kufa is now a city in Najaf province) and posted them and then they took them to Damascus. and you know, ever since then, there's been this struggle, and guess how many there were in the desert fighting with Hussein, 72, does the number 72 ring a bell with you? That was the beginning of martyrdom (hilarious) and the whole theory now that if you kill yourself you'll go to paradise, 72 virgins are waiting for you and so on and so forth, (tear-laughter!) that's where it all began. This fight has been going on for a long time folks and we just stepped in the middle of it. Only what we did, was uncork a corker, because we took 20% (Kerry makes it seem as if Sunnis were always 20%. Historically we don't know about Sunni-Shia distribution prior to the Mongol invasion, but southern Iraqi bedouin tribes only converted to Shiism 200 years ago, since then that rate has been growing - as compared to the 60% figure today, a British 1919 census put Shia population at 53%) of the population that used to run this county, and the 60% Shia that never could and now the 60% Shia have the ballet votes which you know they could never have achieved by the sword, and the 20% who were running the place for the past 1300 years (right but in a wrong context, the Sunni rule was often interrupted by Persian Shia intermissions (Buwyahids, Saffavids, and partly Today) and there's an importance in the fact that Shias were for most of their history after the occultation of Mahdi in a passive standby state until he re-emerges, hence the lack of resistance) are saying: wait a minute, something's wrong ; and that's what's going on. You can't resolve it with our military. "

Link (Real, scroll to 27 min)