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."

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....

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....

The ferocious debate over a new constitution has particularly driven home the gap between the original U.S. goals and the realities after almost 28 months. 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.

But whatever the outcome on specific disputes, the document on which Iraq's future is to be built will require laws to be compliant with Islam. Kurds and Shiites are expecting de facto long-term political privileges. And women's rights will not be as firmly entrenched as Washington has tried to insist, U.S. officials and Iraq analysts say.

"We set out to establish a democracy, but we're slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic," said another U.S. official familiar with policymaking from the beginning, who like some others interviewed would speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity. "That process is being repeated all over."

In an article titled "The Islamic Republic of Iraq - Who Speaks for the People?" Assyrian Ken Joseph Jr. (the Assyrians are the indigenous people of Iraq) said earlier this year that he had what he called a troubling conversation with Iraq's new Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaffari, about the future role of Islam in Iraq.

Joseph said he told al-Jaffari that non-Moslems are very concerned about the influence Islam would apparently have in the new government.

"Saddam Hussein, for all his faults," Joseph said, "did not allow religious influence in the government. In particular when the Governing Council of the previous Iraqi government set up a constitution committee they specifically voted, across religious and ethnic lines, that there should be no mention of ideology or religion in the new Iraqi constitution. Why, when this was so clear and the feeling of the Iraqi people so clear, did you insist on having Article 7 - 'Islam is the religion of the nation'"? Is the short answer to his question simply - Islamists are just being, Islamists?

On the other hand, "if the Iraqi peoples' voice can truly be heard, it will be simply 'The Republic of Iraq.'" It seems that trying to teach Islamics about real freedom, is like trying to teach pigs how to fly.

Related:
Iraq Winners Allied With Iran Are the Opposite of U.S. Vision