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."...

What are some of the factors this article discusses?

• High percentage of people in Baghad who go without electricity for days in 120 degree heat.
• Parents are afraid of their children being kidnapped
• Unemployment is at 50-60 percent.
• US has spent $20 billion dollars on the effort
• Shiites and Kurds want autonomy and, because laws must be compliant with Islam, women's rights will not be elevated
• Oil from Iraq not enough to pay for reconstruction, as the Bush administration promised
• US was not greeted with flowers, but countrymen resisting US invasion and occupation

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. "The administration says Saddam ran down the country. But most damage was from looting [after the invasion], which took down state industries, large private manufacturing, the national electric" system.

And what about this? The United States people were told that invading Iraq was necessary in order to depose Saddam Hussein and rid our country of an imminent threat from weapons of mass destruction.

The U.S. decision to invade Iraq was justified in part by the goal of establishing a secular and modern Iraq that honors human rights and unites disparate ethnic and religious communities.

If the above was what was on Bush and his war cabinet's mind, it wasn't communicated to the public until after the failure to find WMD in Iraq and is a poor excuse to justify why it's all right to invade a country, at large expense to us in troops, resources, and finance.

Last week's casualties were the 4th worst in the entire war. Meanwhile, Bush is on vacation instead of, like most Americans, taking a short vacation, and then somberly attending to the duties of being a President with concern.