What Does the Administration’s Leaked Mea Culpa on Iraq Portend?

[Jon8503]

August 18, 2005 - Robert Higgs

In the dreary march of no-news stories about the war in Iraq, little changes from day to day, or even from month to month or from year to year. The killing continues relentlessly, almost monotonously; the Iraqi people struggle to survive without adequate supplies of water, sewerage, and electricity; the political situation festers and bursts forth episodically in kidnappings, assassinations, and violent reprisals; much-ballyhooed elections serve as little more than pointless rituals; the elected representatives quarrel and haggle, altering nothing in the world outside the meeting hall. Through it all, President George W. Bush never fails to perceive progress, and he always promises that U.S. forces will leave Iraq as soon as the Iraqi government becomes capable of providing security.

So, when a genuine news report comes along, even on the front page of the Sunday Washington Post, we may fail to notice that something significant has actually changed. The article I have in mind, by Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer, appeared on August 14 under the headline and subhead “U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq: Administration Is Shedding ‘Unreality’ That Dominated Invasion, Official Says.” Although the article quotes several experts outside the government, its punch comes from statements attributed to anonymous high-level “officials in Washington and Baghdad.” Such “leaks” often consist of information the government wants people to have, even as its official statements continue to follow a different story line. The government may want to see how people react to the leaked revelations or to soften them up for a policy change to come.

The Bush administration, the article explains, no longer expects to produce a model democracy, a well-functioning oil industry, or “a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges” in Iraq. In short, the country is in terrible shape, and the U.S. government cannot solve the Iraqis’ most pressing problems. According to a senior U.S. official, “what we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground. We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we’re in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning.”

To appreciate just how shocking this statement is, one must recall that not so long ago, a Bush staffer was quoted as saying, “We’re an empire now, we make our own reality.” Indeed, since 9/11 the Bush administration’s foreign policy has been everything that foreign-policy realism is not. The government’s faith-based occupation of Iraq, however, has not held up well against the rocket-propelled grenades, improvised explosive devices, small-arms fire, and mortar rounds that continue to batter it with distressing regularity, inflicting casualties of nearly 2,000 dead and some 14,000 wounded among U.S. military forces so far. An administration notable for its arrogance now undertakes to “shed the unreality” that underlay its invasion and occupation.

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1553

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. What does it portend?

A shit sandwich for the Iraqis and Americans.

Go ahead. Take a bite.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. The "reality" is that the war was lost the first day a GI set foot in Iraq

The occupation is just a continuation of a blunder spurred by hubris and the fantasy that the Iraqis really wanted their country ruled and exploited by neo-colonialists.

Now it's becoming obvious even to the geniuses who dreamt up this little foray into the middle-east that it's time to cut-and-run...er, seek Peace with Honor.

[Toots]

3. “shed the unreality” that underlay its invasion and occupation.

Is this an open admission of deceit? IOW they LIED to start this war....