How Low can Expectations in Iraq Go?

Forget the purple fingers and the self-congratulations about building a democracy from last January. Some on Team Bush are seriously lowering the bar on what they expect to happen in Iraq, according to the Washington Post:

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 where the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

This is one of those times when U.S. officials should have to be on the record. Who is saying this? Of course, never one to face facts, Chimpy is still extolling his successes:

"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.

Succeed? You decide. As I was reading the Post article, I kept coming across lines and paragraphs about the real situation in Iraq. It's ugly. These items all appear scattered throughout the piece. So, actually, here's what we have given Iraqis:

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.

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.

But Iraq, ranked among world leaders behind Saudi Arabia in proven oil reserves, is incapable of producing enough refined fuel amid a car-buying boom that has put an estimated 1 million more vehicles on the road in the postwar period. Lines for subsidized cheap gas stretch for miles every day in Baghdad.

[I]nadequate training for Iraqi staff, regional rivalries restricting the power flow to Baghdad, inadequate fuel for electrical generators and attacks on the infrastructure have contributed to the worst summer of electrical shortages in the capital.

Water is also a "tough, tough" situation in a desert country, said a U.S. official in Baghdad familiar with reconstruction issues. Pumping stations depend on electricity, and engineers now say the system has hundreds of thousands of leaks.