After 9 years of war - Post-US Iraq: Welcome to Shia-stan

Ahmad Al-Rubaye / AFP - Getty Images

Iraqi Muslim Shiites hit themselves with swords during Ashura rituals in Baghdad's Sadr City on Dec. 6, 2011. Ashura mourns the death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.

By Richard Engel , NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent/

BAGHDAD – It was a cold night in Baghdad. I was standing on the roof of Saddam’s information ministry listening to a televised speech by President George W. Bush. He gave Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave, or else.

I remember the chills that went down my legs, as if I was bracing myself for an impact. A big war was coming. The American military machine had risen and was ready. 

This past Monday, on another cold night in Baghdad, I listened as President Barack Obama said the war is ending. Troops are leaving. This war is wrapping up. I had those chills again, but on this night, it was just from the cold.  

So much has changed since the war began. So many U.S. troops have made this the mission of their lives. Nearly 4,500 of them died in a war launched to find weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist and to topple a dictator who had nothing to do with 9/11 or Osama Bin Laden, even though that’s how it was sold. 

Saddam was brutal. He had no regard for the lives of his people. He buried his enemies in mass graves. Stalin was his hero. Saddam’s son, Uday Hussein, was evil, psychotic and, by many accounts, a rapist. But Iraqis have lived through absolute hell during the war – an estimated 150,000 of them have died, mostly at the hands of other Iraqis, according to some Iraqi government estimates.

Regardless of President Bush’s intent in waging this war, what it wound up doing is replacing a dictator with a Shiite-run state that is close to Iran. This could not have been the plan.

Welcome to Shia-stan.

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