Iraq taq

I'm glad the media is finally starting to look at what the Iraqis think we should do about the occupation. Slate's Fred Kaplan is the most recent to tell us that most Iraqis want us to leave sometime, but not yet (I would hope they'd want us to leave eventually). The question is when the number that wants American troops to leave "now" passes 50 percent (it's now at 47), will that be highlighted, or will there be another excuse for why we're still there?

Also, I don't quite know what the point of Walter Russell Mead's article in The New Republic is. The thrust seems to be that the U.S. screwed up badly in Iraq and the Middle East, but that other parts of the world have been making progress over the past 7 years (on their own for the most part) and we haven't screwed them up. And the U.S. is still going to be powerful when Bush leaves. Ok. It is pretty enjoyable to read, I guess.