Democracy rarely happens overnight. The U.S. Civil War came along 85 years after the nation got started.

How's democracy taking hold in Iraq? Not too well. Meet Moztada al-Sadr, son-in-law of a grand ayatollah.

He's young. But he can trace his family lineage directly back to the prophet Muhammad. That gets him a lot of credibility.

al-Sadr heads the Mahdi Army. It's not an official army. It's a band of 10,000 Shiite militiamen, vying for control of Iraq.

His followers battle coalition troops in Baghdad. They've taken control of cities in the south. They run police stations, holy sites and political offices.

His own father, two brothers and father-in-law were all murdered by Hussein's secret police.

In a U.S.-run poll in Iraq, al-Sadr ranked more popular than Iraq's "elected" prime minister.

Then you've got the "Badr Brigade." The Brigade is also Shia. It's the armed wing, in fact, of SCIRI, the party of Shia Muslims who dominate the newly elected Iraqi Parliament.

Shia Muslims - or Shiites - are a sect of Islam. Around the world, there aren't many of them. But in the Middle East, the 140 million Shia Muslims make up more than half the population of the entire region.

The other half is Sunni Muslim. Shiites and Sunnis hate each other. They have been at war in Iraq ever since Saddam fell. They have been at war across the Middle East for the last 1,374 years.

The 40% of people supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon are also Shia. President Assad in Syria is Alawi, which is a Shia subgroup. The new president of Iraq is Shia. In fact, 60% of the Iraqi population is Shia.

Sadr City, Karbala and Najaf, Iraq... they're all jammed with Shia Muslims. The oppressed Shiites partied in the streets when Saddam fell. Today, they terrorize the coalition troops and take potshots at their Sunni neighbors.

They call it the "Balance of Terror" - a cycle of violence and counterviolence between Sunnis and Shias across the region - that's supposed to keep Shia populations from being marginalized ever again.

This virtually guarantees the Iraqi civil war will happen. In fact, even though Washington says we don't have to worry, our own top generals, CIA insiders and Middle East experts all say it's already begun.

Gen. John Abizaid was our top U.S. military commander in the Middle East. Here's what he had to say recently: "I believe that sectarian violence is probably as bad as I have ever seen it."

And William Patey, the U.K. ambassador to Iraq who just retired, says, "The prospect of a low intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy."

Bush and his?advisors have turned a deaf ear. They're in denial.

But that doesn't mean you should ignore the writing on the wall.

Think about it. Shias dominate the new Iraqi government. This is a "New Middle East" all right. Just not the one anyone ever hoped for.

The Iraqi Highway Patrol, run mostly by Shias, doubles as a not-so-secret Sunni Arab death squad. When Sunni's bombed the Shias' Golden Mosque, Shias bombed eight Sunni mosques and killed over 50 Sunni Arabs in retaliation.

Gunmen spraying worshippers with automatic fire during morning prayers... blasts in a crowded marketplace... over 1,000 Shia dead in a stampede, on rumors of a Sunni suicide bomber.

The last time Shia militias threatened to blow up oil fields in southern Iraq, they shut down - cutting off 90% of Baghdad's oil revenue. This is the seat of world oil wealth on edge, worse than at any other time in history!