The candidates on Iraq

This is an interesting Op-Ed in the NYT. I think most Americans probably have no clue what's going on in Iraq, and the opinions probably fall either on the side of "we need a victory, we won't retreat!" to "we started it, we need to take responsibility and finish it," to "we made a huge mistake, it's costing us a huge amount of money, and we need to get out," very simplistic and general. What's going on? "The surge is working," or "the surge didn't work," or "people are dying, there's still civil war." Probably not much more. My level of understanding isn't much deeper because that is not a strong point for me, and I don't see a lot of point in trying to learn every detail of what's going on in Iraq -- I don't even know if it's possible for us to really know what's going on, because I don't know how much is reported and how much of what's reported is true.

But this op-ed piece basically says that Democrats have to stop saying that McCain wants to be in Iraq for another 100 years because it's avoiding the real issues, and the real issues are really bad. That's my summary. But the piece is replete with details about recent events that are pretty horrifying, as usual.