Lowering the bar on Iraq

Could it be true? Could the Bush administration be moving from neocon idealism to cold, hard realism? The Washington Post suggests so:

The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

I really, really hope it didn't take them three years to realize this. But with the clowns running policy completely out of the Pentagon since 9/11, I wouldn't be surprised if they're just getting the memos today.