The Pentagon Has Good News: Hatred for U.S. Occupation Transcends Religious and Ethnic Differences

Here are the first two paragraphs of a Washington Post article by Karen DeYoung:

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.

Care to run that one by us again?

Blogger reaction is ... bemused:

... i[s] this silly, implausible spin or is this project being overseen by idiots? There's just no way you could construe widespread, cross-sectarian belief that the departure of US forces is crucial for national reconciliation as supporting a policy of a decades-long American military involvement in Iraq.

You very well might characterize this as "good news" since it indicates that there's at least some chance that a program of withdrawal would boost political reconciliation, but it's certainly not "good news" for the policy we're actually pursuing.

Andrew Sullivan wonders: "So we can leave now?"

If this is the good news ...

We'd hate to see the bad news[.]

We're not the only ones to notice something of, well, a discordant note in a Washington Post article about Iraq today. Reporter Karen DeYoung leads her story off by writing, "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."

Now, it seems to us as if that might be considered a bad sign. But according to DeYoung, that's not how the U.S. military sees it. "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."

Prometheus 6 declares, "I haven't heard anything so desperate since I stopped clubbing."