Good News From Iraq

The US appears to be bringing the people of the country together:

Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of "occupying forces" as the key to national reconciliation, according to focus groups conducted for the U.S. military last month.

That is good news, according to a military analysis of the results. At the very least, analysts optimistically concluded, the findings indicate that Iraqis hold some "shared beliefs" that may eventually allow them to surmount the divisions that have led to a civil war.

So we can leave now?

The Iraq Debate

A reader writes:

Your dissenter wrote:

"I am certain that a hasty and dangerous withdrawal is more likely under an Obama or a Paul presidency than a McCain one.  And so I must back the senior Senator from Arizona."

Perhaps this is true, but so far Iraqi politicians have done nothing with the lull in violence.  Instead, it appears to have bolstered their ill-founded faith in the US’ ability to restore order if things get out of hand. They’re behaving like an investor taking on more and more risk for their faction (being aggressive in their demands) under the idea that if there’s a serious reversal (anarchic violence) that the government (us) will bail them out. An impending Paul or Obama presidency would make it clear that we’re not going to wait for one side or another to gain ascendancy before leaving them to sleep in their own bed.  We owe Iraq a lot for our past mistakes, but in this case I don’t see anything else to do but to take a tough-love stance.

No one is explicitly arguing that we should occupy Iraq for ever. But that is the obvious inference from our current strategy if nothing is done to shake it up. The next president will be trying to get out, whoever he or she is. The question is: who will be best at marshalling the diplomatic energy, the military nuances and the political unity required to pull it off as quickly and as prudently as possible? I’m not sure that McCain, for all his many virtues, will ever be able to persuade the Iraqis to kiss and make up. He’s an insurance policy for their continuing to fight.

“BarackOsama2008” Ctd

This seems to be the consensus:

DNS doesn’t quite work the way that the Whois and the reverse IP make it appear. Just because barackosama2008.org resolves to the same IP address as hillaryclinton.com doesn’t mean that hillaryclinton.com is actually "serving" that domain.  All it means is that someone who owns barackosama2008.org decided to point that domain name at hillaryclinton.com’s IP address.  It doesn’t imply ownership.  Anyone who would be slimy enough to register barackosama2008.org would be slimy enough to point it at Hillary.

Another reader adds:

The site was registered using a proxy company that registers the domain with their information, instead of the individual having to enter theres.  This is a fairly common practice, especially when someone does not want their domain to be traced.

But it is probably not affiliated with the Clinton campaign.

If you notice, the domain originally pointed to GOP.com, they were essentially using it is as a domain alias that routed users to a different site.   Then someone pointed it to the Hillary Clinton website.  Now it points to Google.  The domain was registered way back in January of 2007.

For all we know, it could have been a tech-savvy Obama supporter, just as much as it could be an Edwards or Clinton fan.

Thanks for the emails.