import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
theStr = '<names><name pos="1">A</name><name pos="2">B</name></names>'
root = ET.fromstring(theStr)
>>> for child in root:
... print child.tag, child.attrib, child.text
...
name {'pos': '1'} A
name {'pos': '2'} B
>>> for child in root.findall('name'):
... print child.text
...
A
B