The one hopeful sign is that my Palestinian friends tell me that, in palestine at least, Sunni and Shiite get along just fine as long as there is nothing to exacerbate matters. Unfortunately this is not the case in Iraq, although it might be possible if they tried hard enough. The best thing that can be said about the old Baathist party is that it tended to use religion, rather than letting religion use it. A Turkish style secular state would be best, but that's not going to happen.