http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8942482/

U.S. LOWERS EXPECTATIONS FOR IRAQ.

The Washington Post

By Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer

Updated: 11:32 p.m. ET Aug. 13, 2005



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

The realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how initial U.S. ambitions have not
been fulfilled in ways that Americans and Iraqis once anticipated. Many of Baghdad's 6
million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of
kidnapping are keeping children indoors.


Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. Ethnic or religious-based militias police the northern and southern portions of Iraq. Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent.

"We set out to establish a democracy, but we're slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic," said another U.S. official familiar with policymaking from the beginning, who like some others interviewed would speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity. "That process is being repeated all over."

U.S. officials now acknowledge that they misread the strength of sentiment among Kurds and Shiites to create a special status. The Shiites' request this month for autonomy to be guaranteed in the constitution stunned the Bush administration, even after more than two years of intense intervention in Iraq's political process, they said.

"We didn't calculate the depths of feeling in both the Kurdish and Shiite communities for a winner-take-all attitude," said Judith S. Yaphe, a former CIA Iraq analyst at the National Defense University.Killings of members of the Iraqi security force have tripled since January. Iraq's ministry of health estimates bombings and other attacks have killed 4,000 civilians in Baghdad since Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's interim government took office April 28.

Last week was the fourth-worst week of the whole war for U.S. military deaths in combat, and August already is the worst month for deaths of members of the National Guard and Reserve.

Attacks on U.S. convoys by insurgents using roadside bombs have doubled over the past year, Army Brig. Gen. Yves Fontaine said Friday. Convoys ferrying food, fuel, water, arms and equipment from Kuwait, Jordan and Turkey are attacked about 30 times a week, Fontaine said.
"There has been a realistic reassessment of what it is possible to achieve in the short term and fashion a partial exit strategy," Yaphe said. "This change is dictated not just by events on the ground but by unrealistic expectations at the start."

Washington now does not expect to fully defeat the insurgency before departing, but instead to diminish it, officials and analysts said. There is also growing talk of turning over security responsibilities to Iraqi forces even if they are not fully up to original U.S. expectations, in part because they have local legitimacy that U.S. troops often do not.

"The most thoroughly dashed expectation was the ability to build a robust self-sustaining economy. We're nowhere near that. State industries, electricity are all below what they were before we got there," said Wayne White, former head of the State Department's Iraq intelligence team who is now at the Middle East Institute.

"We've said we won't leave a day before it's necessary. But necessary is the key word — necessary for them or for us? When we finally depart, it will probably be for us," a U.S. official said.

The president for the past few years has asserted over and over again how grand things are in Iraq. He has lied to us simply because he doesn't have the guts to admit failure.

His administration has presented corrupted evidence of weapons of mass destruction collected on its watch and then had the nerve to say that other administrations had the same evidence.

His administration told us that it was racing to build armor kits for the troops even though factories for the kits were only working at 50% capacity per government contracts.

His administration proclaimed that it was better to fight the terrorists in Iraq then face the prospect of fighting them in the U.S. But Bush never clarified that 95% of the Iraqi terrorists were home grown Sunni insurgents who emerged after our invasion and who have no reason to come to the U.S.

This president doesn't deserve the respect of the American people. He has clearly shown that he doesn't respect them

And anyone with a realistic view of the region knew as much. But if they said so, they got fired, like General Zinni did.

This president says he is a strait talking honest and religious man. That is a good image and his simple language conveys that to the simple man. But in reality a buch of right wing neocons hijacked US policy using Straussian beliefs of ruling with fear, nationalism and religion. And did so using the "noble lie" or as Wolfowitz himself said "buerocratic reasons", to justify an unjust war.

The deaths, debt, dishonor and dishonisty of this administration will be its lasting legacy. But unfortunately, America is not the brightist nation in the world and the voting masses, or sheeple, are easily manipulated with sound bites, and that is the short term reality.

exactly, we were saying this to neocons for 2-3 years and they kept telling us all the crap about how "the media is just showing the bad parts" (same media that publicised the Bush Kerryvich before election)
now i wonder what these azzwipes can say now. i bet you won't see hansmoleman, sadistic, broncobilly, sickandtiredofliblies, barneyfife, catzmeow, Rebellion, Sinanju, on this thread (unless looking like complete azzwipes, but they can't say anything here on topic!!)

God dam ninkompoops.
did we antiwar guys win or what? "aaaaaaaaah we so horribly unpatriotic"

Read his lips...

Bush: ‘We're helping Iraqis succeed’
Administration officials still emphasize how much they have achieved despite the postwar chaos and escalating insurgency. "Iraqis are taking control of their country, building a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And we're helping Iraqis succeed," President Bush said yesterday in his radio address.

Iraqi officials yesterday struggled to agree on a draft constitution by a deadline of tomorrow so the document can be submitted to a vote in October. The political transition would be completed in December by elections for a permanent government.
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This report from a correspondent in Baghdad who quotes high ranking administrative "officials" is a paean to the gullibility of the anti-freedom crowd of the left. Good grief, liberals, has your passion for the United States to fail in establishing a free form of government in Iraq clouded your eyes so that you can no longer read simple text without a wishful interpretation that sees the Iraqi people as incapable of self-government.

Instead, I see you all as a group, incapable of self-government.
At least until you grow up and realize that we free people on Earth have a common cause fight against despotic rule and tyranny.

then go fight and stop bull crapping. if all the neocons and bushnicks would be actually out fighting and not with their mouth or their keyboard, maybe we could make something out of this country. sometimes i think it may be worth to put them on welfare just with a condition that they stay in another country

imagine how quick you could succeed if you would all actually went out and fought. and stayed together in one bunch. all the bushes, clintons, wolfowitz, all the zionists etc. all in one bunch fighting and not with their crapper. BOOOOOOOOM!!!! and the world would be a wonderful place, a magical place.

No more caffeine for you! lol.

So - you've joined the struggle against Bush and the Neo/Con/Neo/Fascists, have you? Congratulations on waking up from your previous status as a brainwashed dupe of the lying bastards who are profiting from Bush's War on Iraq. Down with the "despotic rule and tyranny" of the Plutocrats.

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"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it. " --Noam Chomsky

Americans are suckers for keywords like freedom and safety, and politicians can easily use their nationalism to get votes. I thought the 2004 elections were retarded they put all the emphasis a few issues instead of examining who was the best all around president to serve the country. I was disgusted to hear many people voted for Bush because he was born again Christian. Enough to swing the vote in his favor!

As far as the articles goes I really hope too many people are surprised. The US is trying to force social changes that took the America, who have guaranteed them in the constitution they were founded on, hundreds of years to obtain in a comfortable economic situation on a starving country that has had fighting for the last millenium. One thing the Bush administration, and most American governments over the last 60 years, failed to recognize is that forcing democracy on people isn't democratic. One more sign that this would not work is it was the US who entirely did the fighting: they weren't helping some democratic uprising or any uprising for that matter atleast none of any significance. You can't help those who don't help themselves. Well that the end of my rant.

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It is more patriotic when you don't ask questions

The Bush administration or the Islamic terrorists?

As a more "moderate" voice in regard to the war (although I am against it), let me answer. IMO the war on terror and Iraq are at best loosely connected. Neither Iraq nor any of its citizens had anything to do with either of the two Islamic attacks against us. While Saddam certainly did not cry over 9/11 he also (according to nearly all Middle East experts) also had little love for Al Qaeda. Did terrorists ever waltz through Iraq? Likely. Did he seek them out and turn them over? Of course not. But Iraq was FAR from a "safe haven" or training ground. Further, he could not sell them weapons of any kind because he had none. Oddly, some of our "allies" in the "fight against Islamic extremism" actually DO provide safe havens. And one, Pakistan, also has WMD's. But we are fine with that, I guess. Further, other bad guy countries like Iran and Syria had far more to do with terrorists than Iraq ever did. And they continue to do so while W is walking with their leaders holding hands.

So Islamic extremists are certainly the enemy (even if I feel the threat is way overblown), but I feel Iraq was way down the list of actual threats to our safety. Essentially we will spend $500 billion plus to protect against a threat that never really existed. Meanwhile we ignore ACTUAL problems like the fact both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan run training schools, something Iraq NEVER did.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.