"We are definitely cutting corners and lowering our ambitions in democracy building," Diamond said

CAIRO , August 14, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – The Bush administration is significantly scaling down its "unrealistic" goals regarding what can be achieved in Iraq , a leading American daily reported Sunday, August 14.

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," a senior official involved in US policy since the 2003 invasion-turned occupation of the oil-rich Arab country told The Washington Post.

"We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

Judith S. Yaphe, a former CIA Iraq analyst at the National Defense University , concurred.

"There has been a realistic reassessment of what it is possible to achieve in the short term and fashion a partial exit strategy," he said.

"This change is dictated not just by events on the ground but by unrealistic expectations at the start."

Larry Diamond, a Stanford University democracy expert who worked with the US occupation administration of Paul Bremer, confirmed the new tendency.

"We are definitely cutting corners and lowering our ambitions in democracy building," said Diamond, the author of Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq.

US officials say the administration's prime goal is now to ensure a constitution that can be easily amended later so Iraq can grow into a democracy.

"We also don't have the time to go through the process we envisioned when we wrote the interim constitution -- to build a democratic culture and consensus through debate over a permanent constitution," Diamond said.

Secular Model

In the run-up to the invasion, the White House said it would work to build a model secular Iraq .

But the ferocious debate on drafting the new constitution showed that the first post-Saddam charter will require laws to be compliant with the Shari'ah.

"We set out to establish a democracy, but we're slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic," a US official familiar with the process told the daily.

"That process is being repeated all over," he said.

President Jalal Talabani expected the draft constitution to he ready by Sunday, a day ahead of schedule.

The 71-member drafting committee reportedly reached agreements on most of the crucial issues, including sharing oil wealth.

But the sticking points of federalism and the role of Islam in legislation, are still under discussion.

Misreading

"We didn't calculate the depths of feeling in both the Kurdish and Shiite communities for a winner-take-all attitude," said Yaphe.

US officials also admit misreading the strength of the Kurdish and Shiite demands to establish their own federal provinces.

"We didn't calculate the depths of feeling in both the Kurdish and Shiite communities for a winner-take-all attitude," said Yaphe.

On Thursday August 11, Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim, the influential leader of the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), called for establishing a self-autonomous Shiite province in central and southern Iraq .

The demand stunned the Bush administration, even after more than two years of intense intervention in Iraq 's political process, officials said.

The Shiite autonomy call has angered Sunni Arab leaders who said it could derail the entire political process.

Opposition from the Sunnis could scupper the new constitution as the interim rules stipulate the charter can be rejected by a two-thirds majority in any three provinces. Al-Anbar, Tamim and Salaheddin are predominately Sunni.

Tough Resistance

The tough daily resistance attacks against the US-led occupation forces also left its toll on the administration's Iraq expectations, after its rosy dream of being welcomed with rice and rosewaters by the Iraqi people, said the Post.

Resistance attacks on US convoys have doubled over the past year, according to Army Brig. Gen. Yves Fontaine.

Convoys ferrying food, fuel, water, arms and equipment from Kuwait , Jordan and Turkey are attacked about 30 times a week.

Since the start of August alone, 44 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq in one of the deadliest periods for US forces in the oil-rich Arab country.

According to Pentagon figures as of August 12, a total of 1,841 had been killed since the US-led invasion of March 2003.

Miscalculations

US expectations for rebuilding Iraq -- and its $20 billion investment -- have also fallen the farthest, US officials told the daily.

American officials originally envisioned Iraq 's oil revenue paying many post-invasion reconstruction expenses.

But with escalating violence, Iraq , the world's second largest country with proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia , is incapable of producing enough refined fuel.

Lines for subsidized cheap gas stretch for miles every day in the capital Baghdad , the daily said.

Oil production is estimated at 2.22 million barrels a day, short of the goal of 2.5 million. Iraq 's pre-war high was 2.67 million barrels a day.

Daily Realities

The daily life realities in Iraq are also a constant reminder of how the initial US 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.

The US had high hopes of quick, big-budget fixes for the electrical power system that would show Iraqis tangible benefits from the war.

But inadequate training for Iraqi staff, 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 US official in Baghdad familiar with reconstruction issues.

Pumping stations depend on electricity, and engineers now say the system has hundreds of thousands of leaks.

"The most thoroughly dashed expectation was the ability to build a robust self-sustaining economy. We're nowhere near that," said Wayne White, former head of the State Department's Iraq intelligence team who is now at the Middle East Institute.

"State industries, electricity are all below what they were before we got there."