Thank you very much for helping us keep our eyes on the correct priorities.  We've gotten overly bogged down in discussing the merits of Clinton vs Obama, which is a useful and productive discussion; but it pales in comparison to any candidate against McCain who has served his country for many years, but can no longer keep the facts straight.

A very minor philosophy quibble...  are the majority of Iraqi citizens arab?  What does that mean?   At some point in history the people living along the fertile riverbanks of the Tigris and Euphrates were ethnically distinct from the people living in the desert to their South and West.  I think we all agree that those distinctions are gone now, but I think it is interesting to note that the distinction has not been lost between the blended arabs living along the rivers and in the desert, and the kurds living in the hills and at the headwaters of the valleys to the North.

It is more an exercise in philosophy, but why, after 50+ years of rule by the Baath party haven't all Iraqi's become integrated?  I know 50 years is nothing compared to hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands for arabs to arise out of desert and river people...  but the same question is pertinent here at home.

Why is it we integrated so many european ethnic groups into 19th century America, and then east asians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries... but now we are having difficulty integrating hispanic and south asian people?

Or does history simply gloss over the trouble we had integrating the Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, and Swedes over time, and if that is the case, can we hope it will look back on our problems now as temporary and short lived?

At a fundamental level we are all human beings, we all share the same needs.  That is a teaching of my chosen religion, but it may or may not be a teaching of most people's religions in our country, so we must find secular reasons to integrate more effectively.

I hope we can stay focused on why we should all thank John McCain for his service and help him retire.  We need a president with a much firmer grasp on the realities of today.

"after 50+ years of rule by the Baath party haven't all Iraqi's become integrated?"

The Ba'ath party ruled Iraq for forty years, not 50+. Furthermore, genocide, wars of aggression, and divisive rule tend not to unite a people.

Read "A Problem from Hell" by Samantha Power, the Al-Anfal chapter, as well as "Night Draw Near" By Anthony Shadid.

I would add a few thoughts.  First, tribalism further divides even the same ethnic groups.  In some parts of the Arab world, such as Saudi Arabia, people will not even marry outside of their tribe.  Distrust between different tribes is common.  Second, as laxmatt pointed out, an oppressive rule does not unify different ethnic groups.  We have seen that in European cultures as well as Middle Eastern and Asian.  Look at how quickly Yugoslavia disintergrated into wars of ethnic cleansing after Tito died.  Finally, Iraq itself as a nation is an artificial creation of the British Foreign Office, similar to so many other relics of colonialism around the world.  There is nothing that naturally binds its people together other than arbitrary lines drawn on a map.

Have you read "A Peace to End All Peace" by David Fromkin.  Excellent background on all this. I'd also recommend "The Shi'a Revival" by Vali Nasr.

Perhaps Reverend Wright was onto something.

Listening to the anguished, bite-your-own-tail 'testimony' by Crocker and Petraeus and the correspondingly vacant positions of the three presidential candidates, no one, no one, has the slightest idea how we are going to extricate ourselves from the quicksands of Iraq.

The Soviet Empire's back was broken by its abortive invasion of Afghanistan.

That the compulsive, heedless charge into Iraq was led by veteran cold warriors who chose to know nothing about the nuances of the Muslim world (like the laughably ignorant conflation of secular Arab socialist Hussein with the fundamentalist Salafis of al-Qaeda) is just one more irony surrounding what is apparently the American Empire's Afghanistan.

History is pure Bergsonian flow in that past, present and future are all connected.  And the superficiality of both Republican and Democratic takes on Iraq -- whether it's dumbed down for the American electorate or is just straight ahead superficial -- precludes any meaningful solution to the Iraqi disaster until someone is brave enough or smart enough or both to try and understand that it's the misguided momentum of the last sixty years of American foreign policy, inextricably interwoven with the cancerous defense industry, that has brought us to the brink of disaster.  Actually, like the roadrunner, tragically, we may already be well past the brink.  Maybe that's why no one wants to look down.

In hindsight I posted before fully waking up - you are correct.

McCain asked what Petraeus makes of Sadr's attempt at a cease fire?  Apparently, he doesn't know this is old news and that Sadr is threatening to end the cease fire.  One more example of the fact that McCain can't keep his facts straight or his head in the "game."  Only trouble is, it is so much more serious than a game.

http://www.alternet.org/waroni...

Its been argued that W has set the limbo stick so low as respects to foreign policy that the public "cheers" when he correctly places his finger on the globe when identifying another country.

Tired of the excuses made for persons who should know and understand(i.e.members of congress, presidential candidates) the significance of these two denominations(Shia and Sunnis). Anyone can get an overview from wikipedia.

Remember that McCain graduated in the bottom one percent of his class (894 out of 899) at the Naval Academy in 1954.

As the son and grandson of Navy admirals, he was a legacy admission to the Academy to begin with. He was a spoiled, "entitled," child of privilege who was given, rather than earned through his abilities, his ticket of admission into a military career.

McCain is the military equivalent of a spoiled, rich fraternity boy. Think of George Bush in a Navy cadet's uniform, but with even less intelligence, intellectual curiosity, and social grace than Bush.

McCain can rightly make claim to considerable personal courage and grit for being tortured and held at the Hanoi Hilton for five and a half years, but the rest of his life has been one of rank opportunism, narcissism, and modest achievement. Consider, for example, his dumping of his first wife in favor of beer heiress Cindy, who was able to fund his first election campaign.

Do we really need another severely intellectually limited, incurious President and commander-in-chief?

Do we really want to have a bottom one percenter in the White House?

is too complicated for McCain to learn and remember at his age. There's a simpler mnemonic: "Iraq is like British weather: partly Sunni, but mostly Shi'ite"