Bitt, you're getting hung up on pop. I just want to accomplish a goal, I don't care what transport is used to do it. I started out with imap but I was having some issues with the default configuration on the iPhone and was under the mistaken impression that iTunes should be doing some message syncing.

It's going to be imap, I just have to figure out how I'm gong to clean up the local settings and account on my Mac to get everything sorted.

AND...

The Dreamhost mail settings seem to want to delete/move messages out of the "INBOX" on a schedule:



Those values are mandatory in the setup. Messages can be moved to another folder when the automatic "removal" occurs.