Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki meets with Ahmadenijad in Baghdad, offers him assurances of Iraq’s friendly intentions.

I think Michael Goldfarb very adequately spells out the case for disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters to join him in lining up behind John McCain — if what you liked about Clinton was her support for the Iraq War and the Kyl-Lieberman resolution, McCain may be your man.

But if, like most Clinton supporters I’m aware of, you liked her work on expanding access to health care and building a more generally equitable United States of America, then it seems to me you’re going to want to vote for Obama.

Mark Goldberg notes that the Senate Intelligence Committee seems to have forgotten all about Hans Blix and the IAEA too when discussing pre-war intelligence. After all, wouldn’t want to pay too much attention to the guys who got this right! That, after all, might lead to taking the IAEA’s assessments of Iranian nuclear activity seriously.

I’ve always been a fan of this particular anecdote:

In 1967, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley told President Lyndon Johnson that he needed to remove the 500,000 U.S. troops then involved in Vietnam’s civil war. When Johnson responded by asking how he could do that, Daley replied, “Put them on a [expletive deleted] plane and bring them home.”

It is time to follow Daley’s advice [in Iraq]. These multiple conflicts cannot be resolved by American military power. In fact, every time we deal with one conflict we make another worse.

That’s from Larry Korb’s article on getting out of Iraq, and I say: Indeed. Obviously, any large military operation is logistically complicated. But a lot of people seem to have developed mental blocks — real or imagined — around the fact that yes we can actually decide that Iraq is going to become one of any number of troubled countries that gets along for better or for worse without 130,000 American soldiers hanging around. All it takes is a president who actually wants our forces to leave.