Bush gives up his last rationale.

There have been so many rationales for the war in Iraq. WMD, terrorism, the discredited flypaper theory(that the terrorists will attack our soldiers there rather than civilians here,) human rights and stopping "abuse", women's rights, building democracy, removing Saddam, improving the daily lives of Iraqis, and so on and so on.

But as we've seen, each, in it's turn, has turned out to be crap. And thus, this administration has finally given up its last rationale.

This WaPo article basically says that the new US plan is to let the Iraqis form an Islamic government, with the pretext that the constitution will allow further "steps towards democracy" later. This article also says the US is planning to turn over security to the local forces "in part, because they have local legitimacy."

What exactly is the other part? That this whole Iraq thing was a huge mistake that has cost the US 1853 dead and about 20,000 casualties without accomplishing even one of the rationales for this war. That this administration was willing to "stay the course" and let soldiers die as long as it was politically valuable, but as soon as the true level of failure seeps into opinion polls, to turn tail and run. Isn't that "not finishing the mission?" Isn't that "dishonoring the fallen?" The hypocrisy meter has pegged out.

Bush's legacy is now secure exactly as it should be.

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." .....

But the realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how the 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. ....

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 the 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.