Whenever you feel a need for using range(len(...)), you are almost always doing something wrong. The problem in your code is that you are modifying the tree while iterating over it. However, please ask this question on the mailing list as the bug tracker is not the right place to discuss this.

> If we leave "children" as in "all <country> children of *root*", it doesn't illuminate the fact that if root had a great-great-grandchild also named <country>, then it would return that as well.

No, it wouldn't. It behaves exactly as described. Thus the reference to the XPath section for further explanations.