Moving the goal posts

In today's WaPo we find this -- U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq:

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.

Gasp! Is Bushco finally waking up to a dose of reality? Are they finally going to be straight with us and tell us they f***ed up? Will we hear no more shining platitudes of how we are spreading freedom and democracy in the middle east? No more fairy tales of how gloriously our reconstruction efforts are proceeding? No more proclamations about how effectively our military is thwarting an insurgency that is in its "last throes"?

Administration officials still emphasize how much they have achieved despite the chaos that followed the invasion and the 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.

Guess not. Dubya simply cannot admit that he has erred. This puts his radio address yesterday on a par with Cheney's "last throes" statement. The cognitive dissonance is threatening to blow my head apart.

Now that the administration is supposedly waking up to face reality, will anyone be fired for this fiasco? Rummy? Wolfie? Dick? Nope, but they're sure as tootin' going to can this guy's ass:

The four-star Army general who was fired this week had been romantically involved with a civilian woman while separated from his wife, his attorney said Wednesday.

Lt. Col. Dave Robertson, the attorney for Gen. Kevin Byrnes, said the woman was not connected to the military and the relationship has ended. He challenged the severity of the punishment for Byrnes, 52, who was three months from retirement when he was fired as head of the Training and Doctrine Command. He had served for 36 years.

Yep, the no accountability administration thinks that having an affair after you have been separated from your estranged wife and have instituted divorce proceedings is much, much worse than destroying a country, our military readiness to address a real threat to our nation's security, and our credibility and moral standing within the world community by sanctioning torture. Much worse than failing to adequately arm our troops. Much worse than failing to develop an effective post-invasion plan. Much worse than lying to congress. Yes, the American taliban is certainly thriving... or so it would seem.

Actually, my bet is that this guy was fired not because he had an affair, but because he disagreed with either Rummy or the Dickster ala Gen. Shinseki. But, I digress.

This news, of the administration scaling back its expectations for Iraq, puts Gold Star Mom Cindy Sheehan's protest outside Dubya's Crawford "ranch" in an even dicier political context for the Cheney Bush administration. Her question for is "for what noble cause did my don die"? It now seems abundantly clear that Dubya has no answer to her question. She knows this. He knows that she knows this. The press knows, and they smell blood in the water.